Douglas Caddy

Living and Dying Downwind Radiation, Japan and the Marshall Islands By GLENN ALCALAY www. counterpunch.org March 29, 2011 When the dangerous dust and gases settle and we discover just how much radiation escaped the damaged Fukushima reactors and spent fuel rods, we may never know how many people are being exposed to radiation from the burning fuel rods and reactor cores, and how much exposure they will receive over time. Minute and above-background traces of Iodine-131 are already showing up in Tokyo's water supply - 150 miles southwest of the leaking reactors - and in milk and spinach [with a dash of Cesium-137] from 75 miles away. The Japanese government has recently warned pregnant women and children to avoid drinking Tokyo tap water, and I-131 levels 1,200 times above background levels were recorded in seawater near the reactors. Aside from sharing the dubious distinction of both nations having been at the receiving end of America's nuclear weapons, Japan and the Marshall Islands now share another dubious distinction. The unleashed isotopes of concern from the damaged Japanese reactors - Iodine-131, Cesium-137, Strontium-90 and Plutonium-239 - are well known to the Marshall Islanders living downwind of the testing sites at Bikini and Enewetak atolls in the central Pacific, following sixty-seven A- and H-bombs exploded between 1946-58. In fact, it is precisely these isotopes that continue to haunt the 80,000 Marshallese fifty-three years after the last thermonuclear test in the megaton range shook their pristine coral atolls and contaminated their fragile marine ecosystems. In fact, it was the irradiated downwind Marshallese on Rongelap and Utrik in 1954 caught in the Bravo fallout - and I-131 - that taught the world about the thyroid effect from the uptake of radioactive iodine. The U.S.' largest [fusion] hydrogen bomb - Bravo - was 1,000 times the Hiroshima atomic [fission] bomb, and deposited a liberal sprinkling of these and a potent potpourri of 300 other radionuclides over a wide swath of the Central Pacific and the inhabited atolls in the Marshalls archipelago in March 1954 during "Operation Castle." The Rongelap islanders 120 miles downwind from Bikini received 190 rems [1.9 Sv] of whole-body gamma dose before being evacuated. The Utrik people 320 miles downwind received 15 rems [150 mSv] before their evacuation. Many of the on-site nuclear workers at Fukushima have already exceeded the Utrik dose in multiples. Also entrapped within the thermonuclear maelstrom from Bravo was the not-so-Lucky Dragon [Fukuryu Maru] Japanese fishing trawler with its crew of twenty-three fishing for tuna near Bikini [see The Voyage of the Lucky Dragon by Ralph Lapp]. As the heavily exposed fishermen's health quickly deteriorated after Bravo, the radio operator Aikichi Kuboyama died of a liver illness six months after his exposure; his is now a household name in Japan and is associated with the "Bikini bomb." Meanwhile, the Japanese fishing industry was rocked when Geiger counters registered "talking fish" [what the Japanese called the clicking sound of the contaminated fish being monitored] from the 800 pounds of tuna catch of the Lucky Dragon in Yaizu and in local fish markets. Much of the Japanese tuna at the time was caught by a fleet of 1,000 fishing boats operating in the fertile tuna waters near the U.S.' Pacific Proving Ground in the Marshalls. In response to the plight and symbolism of the Lucky Dragon, Japanese women collected 34 million signatures on petitions advocating the immediate abolition of both atomic and hydrogen bombs in 1955. Pugwash, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning anti-nuclear organization was founded in 1955 by Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein in response to Bravo. The dangers of radioactive fallout from Bravo inspired Nevil Shute's classic nuclear dystopia On the Beach, as well as Godzilla. To quell the diplomatic furor - whereby the Japanese representative to the U.N. accused the U.S. in March 1954 of "once again using nuclear weapons against the Japanese people" - the U.S. paid two million dollars to the fishing company which owned the Lucky Dragon; each of the 23 fishermen ended up with the princely sum of $5,000 in 1956 and the tuna company kept the rest. AEC chair Lewis Strauss (who originally proposed nuclear energy "too cheap to meter" in the post-War Atoms for Peace program) told President Eisenhower's press secretary James Hagerty in April 1954 that the Lucky Dragon was not a fishing boat at all - it was a "Red spy outfit" snooping on the American nuclear tests. The legacy of latent radiogenic diseases from hydrogen bomb testing in the Marshall Islands provides some clues about what ill-health mysteries await the affected Japanese in the decades ahead. Also, the Marshall Islands provide insight about ecosystem contamination of these dangerous radioactive isotopes, and what this means for the affected Japanese. Profiles of the four isotopes o Iodine-131 [radioactive iodine] has a half life of eight days, and concentrates in the thyroid gland about 5,000 times more efficiently than other parts of the body. Traces of I-131 have been discovered in Tokyo drinking water and in seawater offshore from the reactors. It took nine years for the first thyroid tumor to appear among the exposed Marshallese and hypothyroidism and cancer continued to appear decades later. o Cesium-137 has a half life of thirty years and is a chemical analog of potassium; Cs-137 concentrates in muscle and other parts of the body. Rongelap Island has a new layer of topsoil containing potassium to help neutralize the Cs-137 left over from the H-bomb tests, but the Marshallese residents remain unconvinced and suspicious about the habitability of their long abandoned home atoll. Meanwhile, the U.S. is pressuring hard for their repatriation despite the fact that most islands at Rongelap will remain off limits for many decades with strict dietary restrictions of local foods. o Strontium-90 has a half life of twenty-eight years, is a chemical analog of calcium and is known as a "bone seeker." Rongelap and the other downwind atolls have residual Sr-90 in their soils, groundwater and marine ecosystems. o Plutonium-239 has a half life of 24,000 years, is considered one of the most toxic substances on Earth, and if absorbed is a potent alpha emitter that can induce cancer. This isotope too is found in the soils and groundwater of the downwind atolls from the Bikini and Enewetak H-bomb tests. Lessons from the Marshall Islands * It took nine years after exposure to the 1954 Bravo fallout for the first thyroid tumor and hypothyroidism to occur in an exposed Utrik woman from the I-131. Several more tumors [and other radiogenic disorders] among the exposed people appeared the following year and every year thereafter. The latency period for thyroid abnormalities and other radiogenic disorders [see below] endures for several decades. * Because a child's thyroid gland is much smaller than an adult's thyroid, it receives a higher concentration of I-131 than an adult dose. Also, because a child's thyroid gland is growing more quickly than an adult's, it requires and absorbs more iodine [and I-131] than an adult thyroid gland. That is, the thyroid effect is age-related. * Radioactive Iodine-129 with a half-life of 15 million years and a well-documented capacity to bioaccumulate in the foodchain, will also remain as a persistent problem for the affected Japanese. * The Majuro-based Nuclear Claims Tribunal was established in 1988 to settle all past and future claims against the U.S. for health injury and property loss damages from the nuclear tests. As of 2006, the NCT had paid out $73 million [of the $91 million awarded] for 1,999 Marshallese claimants. There are thirty-six medical conditions that are presumed to be caused by the nuclear tests [http://www.nuclearclaimstribunal.com]. Eligibility for Marshallese citizens consists of having been in the Marshall Islands during the testing period [1946-58] and having at least one of the presumptive medical disorders. * The sociocultural and psychological effects [e.g., PTSD] of the Fukushima nuclear disaster will be long-lasting, given the uncertainty surrounding the contamination of their prefecture and beyond. Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton eloquently detailed this uncertain future and fears about "invisible contamination" concerning the Hiroshima and Nagasaki "hibakusha" ["A-bomb survivors"] in his award-winning 1968 magnum opus Death in Life. * Noted radiation experts John Gofman [co-discoverer of U-232 and U-233 and author of Radiation and Human Health], Karl Z. Morgan [a founder of health physics] and Edward Radford [Chair of the National Academy of Sciences' BEIR III committee and advisor to the Nuclear Claims Tribunal] stated that there is no threshold dose for low level ionizing radiation: Any amount of ionizing radiation - which is cumulative - can pose a health threat for certain individuals, and especially those with compromised immune systems. Glenn Alcalay is an adjunct professor of anthropology at Wm Paterson Univ. and Montclair State Univ. in New Jersey. Alcalay was a Peace Corps volunteer on Utrik Atoll in the Marshalls, speaks fluent Marshallese, and has conducted anthropological research re: reproductive abnormalities among the downwind islanders. He can be reached at: alcalayg@wpunj.edu

Radioactive particles from Japan have reached England, today's Daily Mail reports. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1370682/Japan-nuclear-crisis-Mothers-flee-Fukushima-leak-radiation-alert.html

Phone hacking: News of the World locates 'lost' archive of emails Millions of emails from 2005 and 2006 are likely to include those by Andy Coulson and three former editors implicated in affair By James Robinson guardian.co.uk, Monday 28 March 2011 21.17 BST The News of the World has revealed that its computers have retained an archive of potentially damning emails, which hitherto it had claimed had been lost. The millions of emails, amounting to half a terabyte of data, could expose executives and reporters involved in hacking the voicemail of public figures, including former deputy prime minister John Prescott, actor Sienna Miller, and former culture secretary Tessa Jowell. The archived data is likely to include email exchanges between the most senior executives, including former editor Andy Coulson, who resigned as David Cameron's media adviser in January, as well as three former news editors – Ian Edmondson, Greg Miskiw, and Neville Thurlbeck – implicated in the affair by paperwork seized from Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who was on the News of the World's books. Edmondson was sacked in January. Miskiw and Thurlbeck were interviewed by police last autumn. No charge has been brought against any of them. Coulson and the three former news editors have all denied all involvement in criminal activity. MPs on the home affairs select committee are likely on Tuesday to ask about the emails to John Yates, acting deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan police, when they question him over allegations he misled parliament in evidence he gave about the number of hacking victims originally identified by Scotland Yard. Yates told the committee six months ago the Met had only identified "10 to 12" individuals in a 2006 inquiry because the Crown Prosecution Service advised it to adopt a narrow legal definition of what constituted an offence. The Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, has said that prosecuting counsel never adopted this narrow definition. Several News of the World journalists have since been linked with phone hacking after victims began legal battles, raising questions about why Scotland Yard failed to conduct a more comprehensive inquiry. Only one reporter, former royal editor Clive Goodman, was convicted of a crime along with Mulcaire. Both men were sentenced to jail terms in January 2007. No other reporters or executives were questioned by the initial police investigation and only Goodman's computer was seized. Only a series of high court cases brought by Sienna Miller and others have forced the Met to make available the material seized in a 2006 raid on Mulcaire's home, including his handwritten notes. But the disclosure of internal emails from 2005 and 2006, when Mulcaire was at his most active, could reveal the full extent of phone-hacking at the paper and the identities of those involved. In a ruling on Friday, a high court judge ordered the News of the World to make them available to the growing list of people suing the paper. Justice Geoffrey Vos, in charge of the hacking cases, ordered "rolling disclosure" to all claimants on Friday; hundreds of thousands of emails will now be handed over to alleged victims. Parts of the first tranche, which contains up to 8,000 emails, will be passed to Sienna Miller's legal team in April. Lawyers acting for Sky Andrew, the football agent who is also suing the paper, will then receive all the News of the World emails in which Andrew is mentioned days later. News Group told the high court it is close to completing a search through archived emails it claimed had been lost when transferred to India by its IT provider; its lawyers formally apologised to the court for previous claims the archive was not available. David Sherborne, for Sienna Miller, added that it remained 'mysterious' that the editor of the Scottish edition of the News of the World, Bob Bird, had given evidence on oath at the trial of Tommy Sheridan last year that the email archive had been lost on the way to India. News Group also admitted a work computer used by Edmondson had been destroyed before Christmas. They agreed to provide detailed information about its destruction to computer specialists advising Sienna Miller. Computers used by other News of the World journalists have also been replaced or disposed of, but News Group's lawyer, Anthony Hudson QC, said the data they contained had been copied and retained. Sherborne told the high court on Friday that evidence of "a scheme" between News Group and Mulcaire to hack into Miller's mobile phone had been recovered by the Met during the raid on his home. It included an agreement to provide "daily transcripts" to the paper and monitor the activities of the actor's friends and associates, Sherborne said. Further disclosures have been ordered by Vos. They include a copy of an email sent to Mulcaire asking him to target a "wish list" of 17 footballers. News International maintains it will take tough action against any employee who is found guilty of wrongdoing.

http://whitehousetapes.net/clip/lyndon-johnson-jacqueline-kennedy-lbj-and-jacqueline-kennedy This website offers recordings made by a number of U.S. presidents.

Joseph Farrell comments on the Japanese earthquake.

Phone hacking: Met and DPP clash over legal advice on stolen voicemails John Yates and Keir Starmer each imply the other has misled parliament in evidence about phone hacking By Nick Davies guardian.co.uk, Thursday 24 March 2011 14.40 GMT The phone-hacking scandal has spilled over into an extraordinary public clash between the Metropolitan police and the director of public prosecutions, with each side implying the other has misled parliament. The immediate focus of the dispute is a point of law. Its underlying significance is the light it may shed on whether the police have tried to hide the truth about the number of people whose phones were hacked by journalists and private investigators working for the News of the World. In evidence to the House of Commons' culture, media and sport committee, Scotland Yard's acting deputy commissioner, John Yates, listed a series of occasions on which prosecutors had advised police that the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (Ripa) made it an offence to intercept voicemail only if the voicemail had not already been heard by its intended recipient. He said this advice had been given repeatedly during the original inquiry in 2006 that led to the jailing of the News of the World royal correspondent Clive Goodman. "It permeated every aspect of the investigative strategy." It was on this basis, Yates said, that he had previously told parliament police had found only 10 or 12 victims of the hacking even though the emerging evidence suggests there were many more. Yates's evidence directly clashes with a written submission from the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, last October. Starmer said the question of how to interpret Ripa had not arisen during the original inquiry. The prosecution had attached no significance to the point in preparing charges or presenting the facts. "It is evident that the prosecution's approach to Ripa had no bearing on the charges brought against the defendants or the legal proceedings generally," he wrote. Yates's new evidence on Thursday follows a claim in the House of Commons by Chris Bryant that Yates misled parliament over this point. Yates responded in a letter to the Guardian, quoting an earlier written submission from the DPP to the culture, media and sport committee. Starmer then replied with a further letter to the Guardian saying that it was "regrettable" Yates had quoted a single sentence from him out of context. This afternoon the DPP's office declined to comment on the new evidence produced by Yates. The committee has heard that the family of one of the Soham murder victims was phone-hacked.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ4u-v-PJbs&feature=player_embedded Key section starts around 3:30 into the video

Doug there was no need to post the whole speech. Cohen was (is) a smart guy but his background was in classics, law and public administration. He had only been SoD for 4 month at that point, there is no evidence his remarks were based inside knowledge rather than his own beliefs. You will search in vain for a scientist with relevant credentials saying such things. http://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2010/09/24/the-devils-haarp-weather-weapons/

A Rosenberg Co-Conspirator Reveals More About His Role The New York Times March 20, 2011 By SAM ROBERTS Morton Sobell, who was convicted with Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1951 in an espionage conspiracy case and finally admitted nearly six decades later that he had been a Soviet spy, now says he helped copy hundreds of pages of secret Air Force documents stolen from a Columbia University professor’s safe in 1948. According to an article by two cold war historians, Ronald Radosh and Steven T. Usdin, in The Weekly Standard, Mr. Sobell, who is 93, said in an interview last December that he, Julius Rosenberg, William Perl and an unidentified fourth man spent a weekend, probably Independence Day, frantically copying the classified documents in a Greenwich Village apartment before they were missed. That Monday, Mr. Sobell is quoted as saying, he and Mr. Rosenberg filled a box with canisters of 35-millimeter film and delivered it to Soviet agents on a Long Island Rail Road platform. In addition to elaborating on Mr. Sobell’s admission in a 2008 interview with The New York Times that he had stolen military radar and artillery secrets, the December interview appears to stoke the smoldering embers of the case on several other counts. Mr. Sobell’s comments, according to the authors, identify Mr. Perl not as an innocent aeronautical engineer who was entitled to inspect the secret papers and was implicated in the espionage conspiracy only by circumstantial evidence, but as a conspirator against his mentor, Theodore von Karman. Mr. Perl, a fellow student with Mr. Sobell and Mr. Rosenberg at City College, worked with Professor von Karman for the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics at Langley Army Air Base in Virginia during World War II. Testifying before the Rosenberg grand jury, Mr. Perl denied any relationship with Mr. Rosenberg or Mr. Sobell. He was convicted of perjury in 1953. Mr. Sobell’s latest comments also validate an account of the photocopying of the secret papers conveyed to federal investigators by Jerome Tartakow, a jailhouse informer often discredited by supporters of the Rosenbergs, who said he learned of the photocopying from Julius Rosenberg himself. Finally, Mr. Sobell’s comments, as quoted by the authors, shed more light on his motive. “I did it for the Soviet Union,” he said, leading Mr. Radosh and Mr. Usdin to conclude that Mr. Rosenberg and his fellow American Communists “were motivated by loyalty to the Soviet Union, not opposition to fascism as their defenders claim.” The Rosenbergs, who were accused of conspiracy to steal atomic bomb secrets from the United States, were sentenced to death and executed in 1953. Mr. Sobell served 18 years for nonatomic spying. He was released in 1969 and, until the Times interview, maintained his innocence and insisted that he had been framed by the government.

Doug, I've read several articles on this book, and have looked through the book a number of times at bookstores over the years, and Sheeran does not claim he killed JFK. I'm not sure where you got this from, but it's not in the article. Apparently, he said things to Brandt that suggested JFK was killed by the mob. A number of other mobsters--including Joe and Bill Bonanno, said the same. So, it's definitely something they whispered about--whether or not it was true. From the above article "The Irishman starts filming later this year and will also cover Sheeran's alleged role in the assassination of American President John F. Kennedy."

My father was the mafia hitman who killed Jimmy Hoffa By Annette Witheridge Last updated at 3:38 PM on 20th March 2011 Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1368039/Frank-Sheeran-Mafia-hitman-killed-Jimmy-Hoffa-father.html# Robert De Niro is about to bring the extraordinary story of Frank Sheeran - The Irishman - to the big screen. But his daughter reveals how the man who killed his mentor Jimmy Hoffa was a loving father who kept his gruesome past from his family... When Frank Sheeran, the mafia contract killer known as 'The Irishman', got the order to assassinate his mentor Jimmy Hoffa, he knew he had no choice. It was a case of kill on command or die for disobedience. The disappearance of Teamsters union leader Hoffa 36 years ago remains one of America's most enduring mysteries. Contract killing: Frank 'The Irishman' Sheeran (right) with union boss - and future victim - Jimmy Hoffa To this day, no one knows where his body ended up - except for those who buried him. And if not for Sheeran's Catholic guilt at the end of his life and a tenacious former prosecutor turned crime writer, the story of how Hoffa died would never have been known either. Now Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro are set to bring Sheeran's extraordinary life to the big screen. The Irishman starts filming later this year and will also cover Sheeran's alleged role in the assassination of American President John F. Kennedy. For Sheeran's daughter Dolores Miller, the interest in her father is bittersweet. 'I suspected my father was behind Jimmy's death but I never asked him directly,' says Dolores. 'My mother disagreed. She said he and Jimmy were as thick as thieves but my gut instinct told me otherwise. 'The year before, when I was 19, there was a big benefit party for my father. There must have been 1,000 people there, including Jimmy. 'One of my father's most cherished possessions was a gaudy gold and diamond watch Jimmy gave him. He wore it to the day he died. 'I remember my father phoning to say Jimmy had disappeared from outside a restaurant in Detroit. 'I asked him where he [sheeran] had been and he said a wedding in the same area. I made a comment about the coincidence but he brushed it off. 'He was among the top suspects and the FBI put him in prison time and again, hoping he'd crack. But he never did. 'Then towards the end of his life he told me he wanted absolution. I remember saying he had to be truly sorry for the things he'd done in the past, that if he had his time again he wouldn't do the things he'd done. 'He said he was sorry and I drove him to the church to confess. He seemed much happier after that.' In the final five years of his life, Sheeran poured his heart out to writer Charles Brandt. He died in 2003, aged 83, six weeks after reading the finished manuscript, and without revealing to his family what he'd done. 'We never discussed it before he died and Charles didn't tell me the truth until the book came out,' says Dolores, a 55-year-old medical secretary. 'Charles told me to read the story to the end and as I turned every page it got worse. It was awful. I didn't want it to be true that my father killed Jimmy.' Despite her shock, Dolores knew her father wasn't a saint - in the 1980s then-US attorney Rudy Giuliani named Sheeran as one of only two non-Italians on the list of 26 top mobsters. Sheeran grew up in the Great Depression in the tough Philadelphia suburb of Darby, with devoutly religious Irish-American parents. 'We could never tell him our problems for fear of what he'd do to bullies' At 17, Sheeran lied about his age to serve in the war and joined General George S. Patton's 'killer division' - a band of men who showed no remorse as they moved through Europe slaughtering the enemy. He returned to Pennsylvania, drove a lorry and married Mary, an Irish immigrant. Daughters Mary Anne, Peggy and Dolores were born in the years that followed. 'My first big memory of [my dad] was when I was five,' Dolores says. 'My mother told him to take me to see Mary Poppins but instead he took me to The Valentine's Day Massacre. 'I was six when my parents first separated. That's when he met mafia boss Russell Bufalino and my mother said everything changed. 'Bufalino was a nasty, mean man but my father started doing odd jobs for him. It's only now that we know what some of those jobs were.' Sheeran and Mary divorced when Dolores was 12. He would go on to marry his second wife, Irene, and have another daughter, Connie. 'We saw him at weekends and he was always loving. But we could never tell him about our problems because of what he would do. My sister once knocked something over in a store and was bawled at by the owner. 'My father went round and broke the owner's hands. I was being bullied and my father dragged me out to find the bully. 'I begged to go home and was so grateful we couldn't find the boy for fear of what my father would do to his father. 'It was the same with the local flasher - God only knows what he would have done to him if I'd told him. My father wanted to protect us because his world was unsafe .' She adds: 'I was nine when it came on the TV news that my father had been sent to prison. 'No one in the house said a word until I blurted out, "Why's Daddy gone to prison?" I think that's when I got my first inkling that what he did for a living wasn't kosher.' Years later, Sheeran - who was 6ft 4in, with a fair Irish complexion -- would tell Brandt how he completed hits. 'I look like a broken down truck driver with a cap on, coming to use the bathroom. 'I don't look like a mafia shooter,' he said, explaining how he murdered Joseph 'Crazy Joe' Gallo at Umberto's Clam House in New York's Little Italy. Gallo's death - in front of his wife and young daughter - remained a mystery until Sheeran confessed to Brandt. 'I know now Dad had no choice but to kill his friend Jimmy Hoffa' He also told how IRA man John 'The Redhead' Francis drove the getaway car, explaining how mobsters were given different tasks during a hit so that no one knew the entire details. 'If one person did everything, they'd be shot afterwards to keep them quiet. So everyone had a role without anyone else knowing. It meant there wouldn't be a massacre afterwards,' Sheeran told Brandt, a former Delaware prosecutor. Brandt called his book I Heard You Paint Houses - the first words Hoffa uttered to Sheeran. The phrase was mob slang for a killer - as in splattering blood over floors and walls. Sheeran replied that he was also a carpenter - mafia-speak for someone who disposes of bodies. Hoffa was a working-class icon who turned the Teamster union into a nationwide movement before falling from grace and going to jail for racketeering. He was pardoned by President Richard Nixon and was making his comeback when he was summoned to a meeting with two mafia dons on July 30, 1975. His abandoned car was found outside the Detroit restaurant and no trace of him has been found since. There are many theories about why the mob wanted Hoffa dead. One suggests that the Teamsters' pension fund had been supporting mafia projects such as building in Las Vegas and the mob was afraid Hoffa's bid to take over the union would lead to funds drying up. It is thought JFK's assassination was a way to placate Hoffa - as Bobby Kennedy was closing in on him with racketeering charges. Some within the mafia believed Hoffa wasn't grateful enough for the intervention It is also thought that JFK's assassination was a way to placate Hoffa - as the president's brother, attorney general Bobby Kennedy, was closing in on him with further racketeering charges. Some within the mafia believed Hoffa wasn't grateful enough for the intervention. Sheeran told Brandt how he lured Hoffa into an empty house and shot him twice in the back of the head. A second mafia hit squad disposed of the body. 'The Irish FBI guy Bob Garrity wrote a memo about the chief suspects - Sheeran's name was always there,' Brandt, 68, says. 'But no one could prove it. I met Sheeran when the mafia hired me to get him out of jail. He was 74 and in poor health. I got him out on medical grounds and we sat down for a chat. 'He invited me to a mob trial - this wasn't in the book and De Niro and Scorsese were fascinated by it when we met to discuss the script. 'Two mobsters owed Sheeran money and there was a mafia civil court. Sheeran let me listen in, then we went back to my house and started talking. It was 1991 and he had a lot to get off his chest. 'He wanted me to write his book then but backed out because many of the characters were still alive. Then eight years later he approached me again. 'We spent five years going through everything. I used to be a prosecutor and I kept cross-examining him. I checked and double-checked everything he told me. 'My mother told him to take me to see Mary Poppins but instead he took me to The Valentine's Day Massacre' 'He was actually a very likeable man. My wife said she used to have to pinch herself to remind herself he was a hitman. He was full of Irish charm, very intelligent and witty.' But he adds: 'Sometimes I'd get chills as I checked out his stories.' Brandt goes on: 'Hoffa was Sheeran's friend but you didn't defy orders. If he hadn't killed him he'd have been shot himself. He said the mafia was upset because Hoffa hadn't shown enough gratitude over Dallas. 'I realised he was talking about the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. It was always rumoured that the killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, wasn't working alone and that the mob was behind it. 'So I asked Sheeran and his face turned to stone, he raised his right hand at me and just brushed me off, saying "I'm not going anywhere near Dallas". 'I was sure he had something to do with it and kept asking. It was a classic mob hit - Oswald thought he would get away, but Jack Ruby then killed him. 'Eventually Sheeran admitted to taking three rifles to Baltimore - he understood these had then gone to Dallas. I didn't get anything more juicy than that but when I told De Niro and Scorsese they were fascinated. 'We met with the scriptwriter around 5pm and we were still talking at 9.30pm. It was a real thrill that they wanted to know all the background, all the stuff that wasn't in the book.' One of Sheeran's final acts was to read the manuscript of Brandt's book. By now wheelchair-bound and a widower, Brandt recalls: 'He held the pages up in front of a video recorder, said everything in the book was true, then stopped eating. Six weeks later he was dead.' Sheeran gave daughter Dolores power of attorney, explaining he didn't want to be force-fed - he had no intention of living once his mind started to falter. After his death, Dolores and her husband Michael cleared out Sheeran's apartment and discovered the extent of his passion for clothes. 'He was always dressed like something out of Gentlemen's Quarterly,' Dolores says. 'He had 200 designer suits, 100 pairs of shoes. Then there was his jewellery...' 'I know now that he killed his friend Jimmy,' Dolores says. 'He had no choice, he was acting on orders. If he hadn't done it, he would have been killed. 'My father lived to a great age. Most of his associates died horrible early deaths. I am eternally grateful he didn't die like that. 'He chose his own time to go after confessing to his sins.'

To read Kris Millegan's daily installments on this Watergate topic, go to: http://watergateexposed.com/

Met must hand over News of the World phone-hacking evidence Police must pass documents seized from Glenn Mulcaire to lawyers representing growing number of people suing paper By James Robinson guardian.co.uk, Friday 18 March 2011 19.44 GMT The growing number of public figures suing the News of the World won a major high court victory when a judge said Scotland Yard must hand over a mass of phone-hacking evidence that has never before been disclosed. The ruling by Justice Geoffrey Vos, who was appointed this week to handle the 14 phone-hacking cases currently going through the courts, means the Metropolitan police will be forced to pass reams of documents seized from Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who worked for the News of the World, to lawyers acting for the politicians, celebrities and football figures who are suing the paper. They include Sienna Miller, Paul Gascoigne, Steve Coogan and the former culture secretary Tessa Jowell. Vos ruled on Friday that the Met must give unredacted documents – including Mulcaire's emails, address and contacts books, and phone bills – to another hacking victim, the football agent Sky Andrew. The decision sets a precedent for the other hacking cases and has far-reaching implications for the NoW, police and other litigants. It will lead to a flood of hacking documents being released to other claimants, all of whom are seeking copies of papers seized by police in a 2006 raid on Mulcaire's home. That could lead to more NoW journalists being named in connection with phone hacking. So far six reporters and executives have been publicly linked to the practice. One, former royal editor Clive Goodman, was convicted and jailed. A second, assistant editor (news) Ian Edmondson, has been sacked by the paper. Scotland Yard has been slow to hand over the paperwork, arguing in court that to do so would undermine a fresh investigation into hacking it began at the start of the year. It also claimed a potential suspect would be tipped off if unredacted evidence were made public. Vos rejected that argument, giving the Met 28 days to comply with his order and 21 days to appeal.

Key remarks in Sec. Cohen's speech below: "Alvin Toeffler has written about this in terms of some scientists in their laboratories trying to devise certain types of pathogens that would be ethnic-specific so that they could just eliminate certain ethnic groups and races; and others are designing some sort of engineering, some sort of insects that can destroy specific crops. Others are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves." COHEN ADDRESS 4/28 AT CONFERENCE ON TERRORISM Terrorism, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and U.S. Strategy Sam Nunn Policy Forum April 28, 1997 University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia. SECRETARY COHEN: Senator Nunn, thank you very much. As Senator Nunn has indicated, he and I have worked for many years together, along with Senator Lugar. The two of these gentlemen I feel are perhaps the most courageous and visionary to have served in the Senate. They were largely responsible, of course, for adopting the so-called Nunn/Lugar legislation. I'll comment on that later during the course of the morning, but I've had occasion to meet with a number of Russian counterparts, and as we go through various translations of the communications that we're having, the two words they are able to articulate very clearly, they say "Nunn/Lugar, Nunn/Lugar." So they know exactly what that means, and that means the Cooperative Threat Reduction Act that these two gentlemen were indispensable in shepherding through the United States Congress. It was Nunn/Lugar I that dealt with the reduction of nuclear weapons between the United States and the Soviet Union in terms of trying to come to grips with how we helped the Russians dismantle hundreds of their nuclear weapons, and also helped them with their destruction of chemical weapons. But they, of course, have looked beyond simply that particular relationship, which is very important, but also looking to the future that we face as far as the rise of terrorism -- both international and domestic -- and finding ways in which the Department of Defense can become involved in helping local states and local agencies to deal with the threat of terrorism which is quite likely to increase in the coming years. It's a pleasure for me to be here. Both Senator Nunn and Senator Lugar are close friends, and I look forward to, I think, a very productive seminar. Once again demonstrating that although Senator Nunn has left public service in the Senate, he has not left public service as far as the nation is concerned. It's a pleasure for me to be here, Sam. SENATOR NUNN: Thank you very much, Bill. ...Let me ask if there are any questions for Secretary of Defense Cohen. Q: The dual containment policy in Iran and Iraq, do you think that's conducive to regional stability in that region? And do you think (it) can cause further terrorism in the United States? That type of containment policy in the Middle East. A: I think Secretary Albright articulated our policy as far as dealing with Iraq, that it's clear that we have been unable to strike any kind of a productive relationship with Saddam Hussein, and as soon as Saddam Hussein is no longer the head of that government, that there's (a) new regime that follows him, that we will look forward to finding ways in which we could engage them in a much more productive fashion, particularly after they comply with all of the UN sanctions. There's an eagerness on our part to do that. But I think as long as he remains in office as the head of that state, it's unlikely that we could have anything but the current policy in place, with very little prospects for relief. With respect to Iran, I think Iran continues to present a long-term threat to the region. They are acquiring and have acquired weapons of mass destruction, substantial levels of chemicals and we believe biological weapons as well. They have made an effort to acquire nuclear capability. So I think that our policy of dual containment is the right one, and we are going to encourage our allies to support that one. Q: What does it mean that Clinton (inaudible) proliferation? A: To the extent that we see the level of communication available today, the Internet and other types of interwoven communicative skills and abilities, we're going to see information continue to spread as to how these weapons can be, in fact, manufactured in a home-grown laboratory, as such. So it's a serious problem as far as living in the Information Age that people who are acquiring this kind of information will not act responsibly, but rather act in a terrorist type of fashion. We've seen by way of example of the World Trade Center the international aspects of international terrorism coming to our home territory. We've also seen domestic terrorism with the Oklahoma bombing. So it's a real threat that's here today. It's likely to intensify in the years to come as more and more groups have access to this kind of information and the ability to produce them. Q: How prepared is the U.S. Government to deal with (inaudible)? A: I think we have to really intensify our efforts. That's the reason for the Nunn/Lugar II program. That's the reason why it's a local responsibility, as such, but the Department of Defense is going to be taking the lead as far as supervising the interagency working groups, and to make the assessments as to what needs to be done. So we're going to identify those 120 cities and work with them very closely to make sure that they can prepare themselves for what is likely to be a threat well into the future. Q: Let me ask you specifically about last week's scare here in Washington, and what we might have learned from how prepared we are to deal with that (inaudible), at B'nai Brith. A: Well, it points out the nature of the threat. It turned out to be a false threat under the circumstances. But as we've learned in the intelligence community, we had something called -- and we have James Woolsey here to perhaps even address this question about phantom moles. The mere fear that there is a mole within an agency can set off a chain reaction and a hunt for that particular mole which can paralyze the agency for weeks and months and years even, in a search. The same thing is true about just the false scare of a threat of using some kind of a chemical weapon or a biological one. There are some reports, for example, that some countries have been trying to construct something like an Ebola Virus, and that would be a very dangerous phenomenon, to say the least. Alvin Toeffler has written about this in terms of some scientists in their laboratories trying to devise certain types of pathogens that would be ethnic-specific so that they could just eliminate certain ethnic groups and races; and others are designing some sort of engineering, some sort of insects that can destroy specific crops. Others are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves. So there are plenty of ingenious minds out there that are at work finding ways in which they can wreak terror upon other nations. It's real, and that's the reason why we have to intensify our efforts, and that's why this is so important. Q: What is response to (inaudible)? A: We hope we will have access to the defector. In fact I was recently in South Korea and talked with various officials in South Korea. As soon as they complete their own interrogation of this defector, we will have access to that individual. But much of what he has said to date is reflected in the writings that he prepared last year. This is prior to his defection. One would not expect a potential defector to be writing about anything other than what the official doctrine or dogma is of the North Korean government at that time. He is saying essentially what we have known for a long, long time. Namely, that North Korea poses a very serious threat against South Korea, and potentially even Japan, by virtue of having the fourth largest army in the world, by having 600,000 or more troops poised within 100 kilometers of Seoul, of possessing many SCUD missiles, also the potential of chemically armed warheads, the attempt to acquire nuclear weapons. So we know they have this potential, and the question really is going to be what's in their hearts and minds at this point? Do they intend to try to launch such an attack in the immediate, foreseeable future? That, we can only speculate about, but that's the reason why we are so well prepared to defend against such an attack to deter it and to send a message that it would be absolutely an act of suicide for the North Koreans to launch an attack. They could do great damage in the short run, but they would be devastated in response. So we're hoping we can find ways to bring them to the bargaining table -- the Party of Four Talks -- and see if we can't put them on a path toward peace instead of threatening any kind of devastating attack upon the South. Q: ...a little bit about the situation in (inaudible)? A: I really don't have much more information than has been in the press at this point. The Department has not been called upon to act in this regard just yet, so I'm not at liberty to give you any more information than you already have.

Thank you, Duncan,for posting this revealing video. I concur with Martin's conclusion.

Murdoch sued for nepotism over £400m deal for daughter's firm The Independent By Ian Burrell, Media Editor March 18, 2011 Rupert Murdoch's News Corp is being sued by shareholders for the alleged "nepotism" of buying his daughter Elisabeth's television production company Shine for more than £400m. The Amalgamated Bank of New York (ABNY) and the Central Labourers Pension Fund (CLPF), both shareholders in News Corp, have filed complaints that accuse the media mogul of treating the business "like a wholly-owned family candy store". The action surprised the company, which had considered the matter a done deal. But as a trustee for several funds, the ABNY holds about a million shares in News Corp and filed its complaint in Wilmington, Delaware. The CLPF, based in Illinois, filed a separate complaint and demanded access to the News Corp books and the records which explain its decision-making process in buying Shine. Lawyers for the bank said in the complaint that the News Corp board should have done more to ensure the deal represented good value for shareholders. "Although the transaction makes little or no business sense for News Corp and is far above a price any independent, disinterested third party would pay for Shine, it is unsurprising that the transaction was approved by News Corp's board," it said. "In addition to larding the executive ranks of the company with his offspring, Murdoch constantly engages in transactions designed to benefit family members." ABNY said the Shine transaction was an attempt to further the "selfish" interests of News Corp's controlling shareholder at the expense of the company. "The transaction violates the entire fairness standard both on the basis of price and process," it said. "Once the prodigal daughter is back into the News Corp fold, she will vie with her brothers, board members James Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch, for the position of successor to Rupert Murdoch's global media dynasty." News Corp described the claim as "without merit". ABNY's shares amount to only 0.003 per cent of News Corp stock. The company argues that Shine, one of Britain's largest independent production companies with a turnover of £396m, is a "great fit" for the business which will give it more international reach. The deal – which still has to go before News Corp's audit committee – is expected to pave the way for Elisabeth, 42, to take a seat on the board. She had previously declined invitations to join, although she has attended meetings as an observer. When the deal was agreed in principle, Rupert Murdoch said: "Shine has an outstanding creative team that has built a significant independent production company in major markets in very few years, and I look forward to them becoming an important part of our varied and large content creation activities. I expect Liz Murdoch to join the board of News Corporation on completion of this transaction." His daughter expressed delight that Shine, which she founded in 2001 and which has a portfolio that includes Spooks and Masterchef, would be joining "such an extraordinary group of companies" as News Corp. She said: "In a rapidly consolidating global TV industry, this alliance uniquely provides the conditions in which Shine can continue to lead and prosper. News Corporation is the partner that enables us to maintain our aspiration to be best in class." Mr Murdoch is trying to buy all the shares he does not own in the satellite broadcaster BSkyB. Although the Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt controversially decided not to refer the deal to the competition authorities, Mr Murdoch faces a period of tough negotiations with BSkyB's minority shareholders over the price of the 61 per cent of company shares he does not own. How the tycoon bestrides News Corp Rupert Murdoch dominates News Corp, a company that began with his father's newspaper, The Adelaide News, and which now spans the globe. But that does not mean he can do with it as he pleases. The Murdoch family owns 40 per cent of one category of shares in the company. The rest are traded on the stock market in the US, among individual shareholders who want a piece of the vast profits Mr Murdoch generates, and among institutions who invest other people's pension fund money or savings. The owners of these shares have a say in how the company is run, even if they rarely gang up in sufficient numbers to trouble Mr Murdoch. They have a say in the election of directors – and have been happy to go along with the appointment to the board of James Murdoch, Mr Murdoch's son, and two other siblings, Elisabeth and Lachlan before him. They have a say, also, on spending, on outside advisers, and on any other issue that shareholders want to raise at their annual meeting. But when they think directors are squandering the company's money on a bad deal – squandering, in effect, profits that should be given to them in dividends or reinvested in new business ventures that could boost the value of their shares – sometimes the quickest and best way to get a hearing is through the courts. The two shareholders who have revolted over the Shine deal own only a tiny sliver of the company, little more than 1 million shares out of more than 2 billion, but they are standing up for even smaller voices. Amalgamated Bank of New York is a trustee for funds popular with individual investors, while the Central Labourers Pension Fund invests on behalf of 500,000 workers from 12 unions, mainly in the construction industries in the Midwest.

Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media Exclusive: Military's 'sock puppet' software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda By Nick Fielding and Ian Cobain guardian.co.uk, Thursday 17 March 2011 13.19 GMT General David Petraeus has said US efforts to spy on social media are aimed at 'countering extremist ideology and propaganda'. Photograph: Cliff Owen/AP The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media using fake online personas designed to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda. A Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with the US Central Command (Centcom) to develop what is described as an "online persona management service" that will allow one serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities at once. The contract stipulates each persona must have a convincing background, history and supporting details, and that up to 50 controllers must be able to operate false identities from their workstations "without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries". The project has been likened by web experts to China's attempts to control and restrict free speech on the internet. Centcom's contract requires the provision of one "virtual private server" in the United States and eight appearing to be outside the US to give the impression the fake personas are real people located in different parts of the world. It calls for "traffic mixing", blending the persona controllers' internet usage with the usage of people outside Centcom in a manner that must offer "excellent cover and powerful deniability". Once developed the software could allow US service personnel, working around the clock in one location, to respond to emerging online conversations with a host of co-ordinated blogposts, tweets, retweets, chatroom posts and other interventions. Details of the contract suggest this location would be MacDill air force base near Tampa, Florida, home of US Special Operations Command. Centcom spokesman Commander Bill Speaks said: "The technology supports classified blogging activities on foreign-language websites to enable Centcom to counter violent extremist and enemy propaganda outside the US." He said none of the interventions was in English, as it would be unlawful to "address US audiences" with such technology, and any English-language use of social media by Centcom was always clearly attributed. The languages in which the interventions are conducted include Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and Pashto. The multiple persona contract is thought to have been awarded as part of a programme called Operation Earnest Voice (OEV), which was first developed in Iraq as a psychological warfare weapon against the online presence of al-Qaida supporters and others ranged against coalition forces. Since then OEV is reported to have expanded into a $200m programme and is thought to have been used against jihadists across Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East. OEV is seen by senior US commanders as a vital counter-terrorism and counter-radicalisation programme. In evidence to the US Senate's armed services committee last year, General David Petraeus, then commander of Centcom, described the operation as an effort to "counter extremist ideology and propaganda and to ensure that credible voices in the region are heard". He said the US military's objective was to be "first with the truth". This month Petraeus's successor, General James Mattis, told the same committee that OEV "supports all activities associated with degrading the enemy narrative, including web engagement and web-based product distribution capabilities". The discovery that the US military is developing false online personalities – known to users of social media as "sock puppets" – could encourage other governments, private companies and non-government organisations to do the same. Critics are likely to complain that it will allow the US military to create a false consensus in online conversations, crowd out unwelcome opinions and smother commentaries or reports that do not correspond with its own objectives. Centcom confirmed that the $2.76m contract was awarded to Ntrepid, a newly formed corporation registered in Los Angeles. It would not disclose whether the multiple persona project is in operation or discuss any related contracts. Nobody was available for comment at Ntrepid. In his evidence to the Senate committee, Gen Mattis said: "OEV seeks to disrupt recruitment and training of suicide bombers; deny safe havens for our adversaries; and counter extremist ideology and propaganda." Centcom was working with "our coalition partners" to develop new techniques and tactics that the US could use "to counter the adversary in the cyber domain". According to a report by the inspector general of the US defence department in Iraq,, OEV was managed by the multinational forces rather than Centcom. Asked whether any UK military personnel had been involved in OEV, Britain's Ministry of Defence said it could find "no evidence". The MoD refused to say whether it had been involved in the development of persona management programmes, however, saying: "We don't comment on cyber capability." OEV was discussed last year at a gathering of electronic warfare specialists in Washington DC, where a senior Centcom officer told delegates that its purpose was to "communicate critical messages and to counter the propaganda of our adversaries". Persona management by the US military would face legal challenges if it were turned against citizens of the US, where a number of people engaged in sock puppetry have faced prosecution. Last year a New York lawyer who impersonated a scholar was sentenced to jail after being convicted of "criminal impersonation" and identity theft. It is unclear whether a persona management programme would contravene UK law. Legal experts say it could fall foul of the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981, which states that "a person is guilty of forgery if he makes a false instrument, with the intention that he or another shall use it to induce somebody to accept it as genuine, and by reason of so accepting it to do or not to do some act to his own or any other person's prejudice". However, this would apply only if a website or social network could be shown to have suffered "prejudice" as a result

Crimson Rose: The secret CIA project Crimson Rose, an acronym, was a 400 page CIA document whose title was “Confidential Report on Intelligence of Military Secret Operations on Nixon” and whose subtitle was “Report of Operations of Secret Surveillance and Eavesdropping.” My article, Crimson Rose and The Secret of the Two Keys, can be found on: http://www.watergateexposed.com/ and also on http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=17478 I am posting this information on the JFK Assassination Debate because my article also deals with Howard Hunt and his deathbed confession about the role of certain CIA agents in the assassination.

Yates offers to testify again in Parliament The Independent By Cahal Milmo and Martin Hickman Wednesday, 16 March 2011 One of Britain's top police officers says he will appear before MPs to answer allegations that he misled Parliament over the phone hacking scandal, The Independent has learnt. Scotland Yard's acting deputy commissioner John Yates has told the Home Affairs and Media select committees he is willing to testify to "rebut" claims he gave misleading evidence on the law on hacking and the number of victims involved. The Metropolitan police said Mr Yates had written to the committees "offering to appear before them, if they so wish or think it appropriate, to provide the evidence necessary to rebut the allegations that [Chris Bryant MP] has made." On Saturday, Mr Yates quoted legal advice on hacking from the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Keir Starmer, who said his comments had been used "out of context". A spokesman said she could not say whether Mr Starmer would also be willing to appear before the committees, but pointed out that a DPP had never refused to do so in the past.

Met fears release of 'evidence' would hurt phone-hacking case The Independent By Cahal Milmo and Martin Hickman Wednesday, 16 March 2011 Scotland Yard is seeking to withhold evidence from alleged victims of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal over fears that doing so could endanger its criminal investigation. The Metropolitan Police applied in private to the High Court last week for permission to keep back information which had been ordered disclosed in the damages claims of football agent Sky Andrew, comedian Steve Coogan and sports pundit Andy Gray. The Yard argued that disclosing the documents – understood to be notes written by the private detective Glenn Mulcaire – risked "prejudicing" its new hacking investigation, Operation Weeting, whose tasks will include establishing whether there are grounds for bringing new prosecutions. Scotland Yard announced the investigation in January, shortly after Rupert Murdoch's News International passed detectives "significant new evidence" about hacking at the NOTW. The Met's behind-closed-doors application for permission to withhold "some material" for up to 14 weeks in the cases of the three public figures emerged during a pre-trial hearing for Mr Andrew's privacy claim against the newspaper and Mr Mulcaire. Mr Justice Geoffrey Vos told the the High Court in London: "The [Met] Commissioner applied for an order to withhold disclosure of some material which had previously been redacted on the grounds disclosure would be harmful to the public interest [because] it would hamper investigations currently being undertaken." The order has not yet been granted. The hearing was told that Mr Mulcaire had named the NOTW's ex-head of news, Ian Edmondson, as the journalist who had commissioned him to eavesdrop on Mr Andrew's messages. Mr Edmondson denies any wrongdoing. Mr Mulcaire, from Sutton, Surrey, was jailed in 2007 along with the NOTW's royal editor, Clive Goodman, after the private detective admitted hacking into the phone messages of royal aides and five other people. The court heard the Yard was concerned that legal moves by alleged victims of hacking to force the disclosure of the notebooks could imperil its investigation by putting potential evidence into the public domain and "tipping off" possible suspects. Jeremy Reed, Mr Andrew's barrister, said such concerns were "ludicrous" because of the amount of publicity about the scandal and the time which had lapsed since any offences. "It is laughable to suggest that civil disclosure in these proceedings will prejudice the police investigation," he said. In a separate development, lawyers for Sienna Miller and Mr Andrew will launch proceedings later this week, asking News International to disclose electronic material, including emails, that could be relevant to their claims. The key plaintiffs... Sienna Miller The actress will apply through her lawyers to the High Court on Friday for News International emails relevant to her phone-hacking claim and details on how the company stores its vast bank of electronic information. Andy Gray The football pundit's demand for evidence from notes seized by Scotland Yard from private investigator Glenn Mulcaire could disclose which 'News of the World' journalists allegedly asked for his phone messages to be hacked

again demanded any information he might have about the plan to break-in the DNC. He again refused to answer their questions. Merritt was an integral part of COINTELPRO infiltration of the Weather Underground. Felt was in charge of it. Who sent agents Tucker and O’Connor to see Merritt on these occasions? Felt. If the two agents had picked up a rumor about a planned break-in, this would have been documented in an FBI report as required under standard FBI procedure. Thus, the FBI had knowledge of a planned break-in within a few days after Merritt learned this from Rita on June 1. Of course, nothing of this role of the FBI came out in the Watergate investigation. Instead Felt used his official status as second in command to leak FBI investigative documents to Woodward and Bernstein. He did not leak any FBI internal document that showed the FBI had prior knowledge of a planned break-in. William F. Buckley, Jr. in his column of June 5, 2005, after Vanity Fair named Felt as Deep Throat, wrote: “Now Mr. Felt steps forward and says that it was he who in effect staged the end of the Nixon Administration. What he did, over a period of months, was to report to two industrious journalists of the Washington Post, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, everything that came to his attention through the fish-eye lens. Mr. Felt wanted to know everything about the traffic of dollars to and from the Committee to Reelect the President, and everything about the background and activities of everyone associated with the White House, from the Attorney General down to the plumbers. “As evidence accumulated of wrongdoing and crime, he reported not to the director of the FBI (his immediate superior), but to two journalists. Bob Woodward was thoughtful enough to have recorded, the day after the news about Felt broke, his first meeting with Deep Throat back in 1970, two years before the Watergate break-in. There they both were, waiting in the West Wing of the White House, Woodward to deliver a message from the Chief of Naval Operations, the Assistant Director of the FBI on a mission of his own. ‘I could tell he was watching the situation carefully. There was nothing overbearing about his attentiveness, but his eyes were darting about in a gentlemanly surveillance. After a few minutes I introduced myself. “Lieutenant Bob Woodward,” I said carefully, appending a deferential “sir.” “Mark Felt,” he said. “Mark Anthony, meeting Brutus, deserved no greater headline in history.” Wrapping Everything Up In evaluating Merritt’s story, here are some points to keep in mind: There would probably have never been a Watergate scandal had Merritt not told Shoffler what he had learned from Rita. Despite the multiple government and media investigations into Watergate that led up to Nixon’s removal from office, none ever focused on the background of the arresting officer, Carl Shoffler. It was as if he, despite his quest for fame, played a cameo role in the drama when even a cursory examination could have uncovered a clue that would have led to the unraveling of his scheme. For example, the Senate Watergate Committee made little effort to pursue an allegation made by Captain Edmund Chung, Shoffler’s former commanding officer at NSA’s Vint Hill Farm Station. Chung claimed that Shoffler told him not long after Watergate broke that the arrests were the result of a tip-off and that if Shoffler ever made the whole story public, “his life wouldn’t be worth a nickel.” It would be exceedingly difficult to pass judgment on Merritt’s revelations without first reading what Jim Hougan wrote in his 1984 best-seller, Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat and the CIA. Only Hougan traced the actions of Shoffler in the hours before the arrests, noting that he skipped his planned birthday party when his shift ended at 10 P.M. to volunteer for a second shift. Hougan observed that Shoffler then joined a plainclothes unit that cruised the streets and that the unit’s three officers parked their vehicle only a block from Watergate, “as if they were awaiting the dispatcher’s summons.” Hougan wrote further that, “The mysteries surrounding Shoffler are peculiar in the extreme and none more so than the allegations made by one of Shoffler’s former informants, Robert ‘Butch” Merritt. A homosexual, Merritt was employed by the police and the FBI in spying on the New Left, a task that ultimately led to his infiltration of the Institute for Policy Studies, a bête noire of America’s right wing. According to Merritt, Shoffler approached him sometime after June 16, 1972, and asked him to undertake a bizarre assignment. If we are to believe the disaffected informant, Shoffler told him to establish a homosexual relationship with Douglas Caddy, stating that Caddy was gay and a supporter of Communist causes. In fact, Caddy was about as conservative as they come… “Predictably, perhaps, Shoffler ridicules Merritt’s accusation, calling it absurd. One can only agree with the police detective, and yet, where Merritt is concerned there appears to have been more going on than met the eye.” Hougan then described Merritt turning up after the Watergate case broke at Buster Riggin’s porn store, one of whose frequent customers being Carl Bernstein. Hougan disclosed that an internal inquiry by the Post uncovered that “Bernstein was a participant in the frolics of an informally organized ‘social club’ whose membership seemed to be dominated by CIA officers, their girl friends and their wives.” Merritt said that Riggin frequently was host to these “frolics” and that for one party Riggin sent him to bring back a sheep from a farm in Virginia. There would have been no cover up and no resignation by President Nixon if within the first week or two of the case evidence had been produced linking Shoffler with having prior knowledge of the planned break-in. The whole investigation would have then turned attention on Shoffler, the two other intelligence agents who also had advance knowledge, Merritt’s role, the disappearance of Rita Reed, and what the FBI knew. An early resolution of the case would have prevented the poisonous atmosphere that has permeated Washington ever since, which has led to extreme political partisanship making it almost impossible to implement successfully necessary government policies. Why is Merritt telling his complete story now, 39 years after the scandal broke open? There is no single answer. First and foremost, however, is that Merritt would have been killed if he had attempted to reveal what he knew while Shoffler was alive. Shoffler died in 1996 at the age of 51 years from a rare blood disease. Shoffler knew Merritt’s whereabouts and kept in contact with him until 1994, two years before his death. Shoffler was not the only Intelligence Agent whose life was on the line if the real story of Watergate had come out. Two other Intelligence agents heard Merritt’s story of the planned break-in on June 3, almost two weeks before the arrests. There were obviously others, those named in Crimson Rose. What was “Crimson Rose,” the two words overheard by Rita Reed when she listened in on the telephone conversation on May 31, 1972? Crimson Rose, an acronym, stood for a 400 page CIA document whose title was “Confidential Report on Intelligence of Military Secret Operations on Nixon” and whose subtitle was “Report of Operations of Secret Surveillance and Eavesdropping.” It was marked “Eyes Only.” Both Military Intelligence and the CIA had wire-tapping operations located in the Columbia Plaza Apartments in the weeks prior to the Watergate case breaking open. The CIA had an office that was located at 2430 E Street, N.W., within walking distance of both the Watergate and Columbia Plaza Apartments. Authors Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin in their 1991 book, Silent Coup: The Removal of the President recounted in detail a military intelligence spy ring that reported to the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon that penetrated the White House and that was opposed to Nixon’s foreign policy goals. Crimson Rose, the secret CIA report, dealt with this military intelligence spy ring. Its title spoke volumes about its contents. It would be interesting to find out if Crimson Rose contained information about Bob Woodward , who from 1969-70 as a Naval Lieutenant, served as liaison to the White House from Admiral Thomas Moorer, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Woodward’s assignment at the White House was to brief General Alexander Haig inside the office of the National Security Council. It was this period when the military intelligence spy ring operated inside the White House that was secretly chronicled in the CIA’s Crimson Rose document. Upon learning of its existence, Military Intelligence devised a plan to steal Crimson Rose, which it viewed as an explosive and incriminating report, from within the bowels of the CIA. Military Intelligence deemed retrieving the sole “Eyes Only” copy of the Crimson Report as being absolutely essential. This was because, in the wake of Watergate and the disclosure of other unseemly government activities, in 1975 the Senate Select Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, known as the Church Committee after its chairman, Senator Frank Church, initiated hearings into the activities of the CIA and other intelligence agencies. The great fear of Military Intelligence was that should the Church Committee (or the Pike Committee) get its hands on a copy of Crimson Rose in the course of its investigation of the CIA, disclosure of its contents would lead to exposing the role of Military Intelligence in bringing down the Nixon Administration and would drastically affect how the American public perceived its military. Disclosure could lead to a complete reorganization of the Pentagon and court martial trials, perhaps criminal trials, of those involved. Shoffler played the key role in carrying out the plan to obtain Crimson Rose. In June 1975 Mitchell Rogovin, General Counsel to the CIA, was lured by someone he knew and trusted to dinner at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. In the course of the dinner his drink was spiked, causing him to appear inebriated. Several men who were Military Intelligence agents assisted him to a freight elevator that transported them to a floor above. The elevator operator for the special occasion was Merritt, who in prior years had held that position at the hotel. The regular operator of the freight elevator had been given one hundred dollars and told to get lost for an hour. Rogovin was then carried into a hotel room and quickly stripped naked. He was positioned on a bed and a prostitute climbed into bed beside him. Shoffler had arranged with Buster Riggin for the use of the prostitute from the prostitution ring operated by Riggin. Graphic photographs were taken of Rogovin and the woman in different sexual positions. Subsequently, Rogovin was shown the photographs and told that unless he obtained and delivered the Crimson Rose report from within the CIA, the incriminating photographs of him would be leaked. He was also threatened that his son would be set up and falsely charged with selling illegal drugs if he did not cooperate. Presented with these horrific threats, Rogovin chose to retrieve the Crimson Rose report and give it to the military agents involved, whose leader was Shoffler. When Rogovin gave it to Shoffler, the 400-page Crimson Rose file was encased in a formidable binder bearing the seal of the CIA that had a broken chain dangling. The “Eyes Only” document had been protectively situated, chained to a circular table in a secure room inside CIA. In the center of the table were a large number of other CIA “Eyes Only” documents in their chained binders, allowing the documents to be read but not removed from the table. When given to Shoffler, the chain to the Crimson Rose document had been cut. Rogovin resigned as CIA General Counsel the next year. Who were the burglars actually wire-tapping? There is reason to believe that the wire-tapping was of the prostitution ring being run out of the Columbia Plaza Apartments and not of the DNC. Examination of the tapes and the transcripts of the taped conversations would go far towards resolving this issue. The Washington Evening Star on June 9, 1972 published an article that announced the prostitution ring had been broken and its manager, Phillip Bailley, arrested. The same day John Dean summoned the prosecutor handling the case to his White House office and requested that the case file be brought. At the meeting Dean made a careful and detailed examination of the manager’s “trick book” that contained the names of the “Johns” and the women who were the prostitutes. He asked if he could keep the “trick” book but the prosecutor refused his request. Dean and Magruder each had a special reason to want to know what names were in the book. What was the intent of the team of burglars headed by James McCord who were arrested inside the DNC? Gordon Liddy expressed shock in the A&E Investigative Report “The Key to Watergate” upon learning that the burglars were caught around the desk of a secretary (under whose telephone, Shoffler had led them to believe, was planted the key to the desk containing the prized envelope.) Liddy had been under the impression that the team had gone into the DNC to wiretap Chairman Larry O’Brien’s phone. Furthermore, none of those at the scene of the arrests, including Shoffler’s fellow officers and the five arrested burglars, could recall any struggle between Shoffler and Martinez that resulted in Shoffler grabbing a notebook with a key taped on its back from Martinez. Only Shoffler maintained such a struggle took place. There also has existed the question of whether Shoffler contaminated the notebook as evidence while it was in his personal possession and before he turned it in at the police precinct. The precise date on which he surrendered possession of the notebook and key was not recorded. Did he remove one or more pages from the notebook containing information that would have revealed the wiretap triangulation that he used to set up and entrap the burglars? To view the A&E Investigative Report “The Key to Watergate” go to: http://www.nixonera.com/library/watergate.asp The time line of the DNC break-in raises a fundamental question as to who ordered the burglars to go back in on June 17: May 28: First break-in at DNC May 31: Rita Reed overhears telephone conversation about Crimson Rose and a break-in planned for the date of June 18. Those speaking on telephone express hatred of Nixon and desire to bring him down June 1: Rita Tells Merritt what she heard June 3: Merritt informs Shoffler of Rita’s information June 9: Washington Star reports the investigation of Columbia Plaza call-girl ring June 9: Dean summons prosecutor handling call-girl ring investigation to his White House office June 12: Magruder tells Liddy to mount a second DNC break-in June 17: Burglars arrested during second break-in If this time line is accurate, then the two persons having the telephone conversation on May 31 knew of a second break-in being planned for June 18 before Dean, Magruder or Liddy could have known. Crimson Rose was a CIA operation. Thus, someone in the CIA either knew or was calling the shots that a second break-in had to be mounted. Dean did not get concerned about the call-girl ring linked to the DNC until June 9. Magruder told Liddy on June 12 to go back in. Who told Magruder? The evidence shows that three of the men on the burglar team were active CIA agents: Howard Hunt, James McCord and Eugenio Martinez. It is likely that the two people having the Crimson Rose telephone conversation on May 31 did not plan for the burglars to be arrested. Instead they wanted to use the break-in information to blackmail Nixon or his key aides later on. They did not count on Shoffler setting-up the burglars to be arrested. The arrests shocked them and affected their over-all strategy. In regard to my own story, despite homophobic Judge Sirica falsely accusing me of being a “principal” in the crime and trying to frame me because I was gay, I was never indicted, never named an unindicted co-conspirator, never disciplined by the Bar or even interviewed by the Senate Watergate Committee. In fact, at the trial of those accused of the cover-up it was revealed that when I was approached by a mysterious caller to disburse the “hush” money, Herbert Kalmbach, Nixon’s personal attorney, testified “Well, the sum and gist of it was that Mr. Caddy refused to accept the funds.” There can be no doubt but that Sirica’s contempt citation against me, upheld by the Court of Appeals, spurred the cover-up. Watergate would have had a different ending had not homophobia reigned supreme. The police, FBI, the government investigations all mistreated Merritt because he was an open homosexual. Even the Oval Office tapes revealed anti-gay conversations between Nixon and his aides. My being pulled “forthwith” before the grand jury and later being falsely accused by Sirica stemmed from anti-gay bias. Merritt and I realize that our book Watergate Exposed: How the President of the United States and the Watergate Burglars Were Set Up is not the final word on the scandal. There still exist a large number of unreleased government files that would confirm and elaborate on what Merritt claims. The FBI, in response to Merritt’s Freedom of Information Action request, provided some 400 documents to him but withheld 300 other papers. Release of Merritt’s complete government file and that of Shoffler’s would go far in clearing up what really happened in Watergate. Merritt’s story, and to a lesser extent my own story, present a revisionist history of Watergate. This revisionist history joins the controversy surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in raising questions of what actually occurred at the time of these two events, which saw both Presidents removed from office in different ways. It may take a historian, grand jury or congressional committee, building on what Merritt and I supply in Watergate Exposed, to reopen and bring true justice to the case.

On June 28, eleven days after the arrests (and the same day that Shoffler and the four CIA agents approached Merritt with their scheme to assassinate me), I was working on the case in the federal courthouse when I was stopped by one of the three prosecutors, Assistant U.S. Attorney Donald Campbell. When he saw me Campbell thrust a grand jury subpoena authorized by John Sirica, Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, into my hand. The subpoena stated that I was to appear Forthwith before the grand jury. Campbell then grabbed me by my arm and pulled me into the grand jury room. Over the next three weeks I was to appear before the grand jury five times, answer hundreds of questions and have my personal bank account records subpoenaed. On July 10, the prosecutors submitted to the court 38 questions that I had refused to answer on the grounds of the attorney-client privilege. I did so on the advice of five attorneys who were representing me in the grand jury proceeding. On July 12 Chief Judge Sirica in open court that was packed with the press ordered me to answer the 38 questions under threat of being held in contempt of court if I failed to do so, declaring: You see, to put the matter perfectly bluntly, if the government is trying to get enough evidence to indict Mr. Caddy as one of the principals of this case even though he might not have been present at the time of the alleged entry in this place, I dont know what the evidence is except what has been disclosed here, if the government is trying to get an indictment against Mr. Caddy and he feels that way and you feel it and the rest of you attorneys feel it, all he has to say is I refuse to answer on the grounds what I might say would tend to incriminate me. That ends it. I cant compel him to say he knows Mr. Hunt under the circumstances. He doesnt do that, understand? He takes the other road. He says there is a confidential communication. Who is he to be the sole judge of if it is confidential or not? That is what I am here for. Sirica, a homophobic jurist cut from the same cloth as the police, FBI and CIA agents whose actions against me have been previously chronicled, used his position to try to frame me. He was to fail but at a severe cost to the defendants and to the nation. On July 13, I appeared before the grand jury and refused to answer the 38 questions. Sirica immediately convened a court hearing and held me in contempt of court and directed that I be jailed. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit later that day ordered that I be released, pending an appeal before it of my contempt citation. The headline in The New York Times the following day read, Lawyer Held in Contempt in Democratic Raid Inquiry. On July 18, the Court of Appeals upheld Siricas order holding me in contempt. On the advice of my five attorneys the next day I went before the grand jury and answered all the questions. Had I not done so I would have been jailed for an indefinite period or until I did agree to answer the questions. The actions of Sirica and the Court of Appeals did not go unnoticed by the White House. In an Oval Office tape of July 19, 1972, an incredulous President Nixon asked John Ehrlichman, Do you mean the circuit court ordered an attorney to testify? to which Ehrlichman responded, It [unintelligible] to me, except that this damn circuit weve got here with [Judge David] Bazelon and so on, it surprises me every time they do something. Nixon then asked, Why didnt he appeal to the Supreme Court? What Nixon and Ehrlichman did not realize was that I and my attorneys firmly believed that we had created a strong legal record of the violation of the constitutional rights of both the defendants and me as their attorney so as, if Hunt, Liddy and the five arrested defendants were found guilty, their convictions could be overturned as a result of the abusive actions of Sirica and the Court of Appeals. Siricas vitriolic courtroom antics, aided and abetted by a biased Court of Appeals, had the effect of encouraging the defendants to embark on a hush-money cover-up after they realized early on that the courts were not going to give them a fair trial. Hunt later wrote that If Sirica was treating Caddy an Officer of the Court so summarily, and Caddy was completely uninvolved in Watergate then those of us who were involved could expect neither fairness nor understanding from him. As events unfolded, this conclusion became tragically accurate. Bear in mind all the above described courtroom events involving me occurred in the first 23 days of the case. The dye was cast then by the prosecutors and the courts to deny the seven defendants a fair trial. In December 1972 Dorothy Hunt, Howard Hunts wife, died in what some believed was a mysterious plane crash at a Chicago airport. When the trial of the burglars began in January, 1973, Hunt, along with the four Cuban-Americans pleaded guilty, the four Cuban-Americans staying loyal to Hunt and following his lead. The death of his wife had devastated Hunt and he had no stomach for the fight. Burglar James McCord and Gordon Liddy chose to stand trial and were found guilty. I testified at the trial both as a witness for the government and as a witness for the defense. In March 1973, on the eve of being sentenced to prison, McCord wrote a letter to Judge Sirica revealing that there had been a cover-up by the White House and that hush money had been paid. This led to subsequent investigations by the Senate Watergate Committee, the House Judiciary Committee and the Watergate Special Prosecution Force. Merritts attempts to come clean Shoffler moved out of the apartment he shared with Merritt the day after the two FBI agents visited Merritt on June 19, 1972, attempting to extract information he had about prior knowledge of the break-in. The media spotlight was now focused on Shoffler and he had to make certain no one connected him to Merritt, who was both openly gay and knew too much. To keep Merritt quiet and away from prying reporters he decided to assign Merritt undercover informant work in a porn shop run by Buster Riggin, a leader in the prostitution ring that operated out of the Columbia Plaza Apartments. Merritt won Riggins confidence at their first meeting by blatantly posing as an ex-CI who was thoroughly disaffected with the police and FBI. Riggin promptly named Merritt manager of the porn shop and gave him an apartment above it to live in. Riggin was a talkative kind of guy and soon had told Merritt much of the criminal operation that he ran with his Mafia associate, Joseph Nesline. One of the regular customers of the porn shop was Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post. When Bernstein entered the store shortly after Merritt became manager, Riggin wasted no time introducing him to Merritt. Riggin even told Bernstein that Merritt had worked with Carl Shoffler of Watergate fame, the police and the FBI. This information did not seem to register with Bernstein, who, according to Merritt, was preoccupied with perusing and buying S&M, bestiality and golden shower films. Years later, after Merritt had left employment at the book store, he telephoned Bernstein at the Post and asked him to reveal the truth about Merritts role in the Watergate arrests and being an informant for the government. Bernstein claimed that he had never met Merritt and as far as he was concerned he and Bob Woodward had left no stone unturned in pursuing the Watergate scandal. Merritt even talked to Woodward and got the same attitude and feed-back. Woodward refused to believe anything he told him about Bernstein and Buster Riggin. In early 1973 Merritt decided to go public with what he knew about the roles of the police and FBI in the COINTELPRO activities that he had been directed to engage in. By a stroke of luck he got free legal representation in this endeavor from David Isabell, a partner in the distinguished law firm of Covington and Burling and a leader of the American Civil Liberties Union. In another stroke of luck, nationally syndicated columnist Jack Anderson took up Merritts cause and wrote several columns about Merritts CI work for the police and FBI. A few months later Merritt was subpoenaed to appear before a closed Executive Session of the Senate Watergate Committee. He had to testify by himself, without Isabell, his attorney, being permitted in the room. Shoffler was alarmed by this turn of events and told Merritt to stay clear of discussing what they knew about the origins of Watergate, adding that, in any event, being an open homosexual he would be attacked and ridiculed and his word discounted. As Merritt entered the building to testify, he was stopped by Wayne Bishop, the Committees chief investigator. Bishop warned him that if he proceeded to testify, he would be jailed the same day. Bishop suggested that he should turn around and return home and let Bishop inform the committee that he had been suddenly taken ill. Merritt, shaken by Bishops overt threat, nevertheless went ahead and testified. After being administered the oath the first question asked him by one the Senators was whether he was a homosexual. When he responded that he was, several senators denounced him as being immoral. At that point Senator Howard Baker ordered the court reporter charged with transcribing testimony to take her machine and leave the room. Merritt says that he testified under oath about the COINTELPRO activities for about six hours over a three day period and never again saw the court reporter with her machine in the room during this period. In late 1973, Merritt appeared before the Watergate Special Prosecution Force headed at that time by Archibald Cox. Again he testified about his COINTELPRO activities but he also told the special prosecutor about the visits paid him by Officers Shoffler, Leeper and FBI Agents Tucker and OConnor asking him to get to know me on an intimate basis. A lengthy Watergate Special Prosecutor Force memorandum of November 20, 1973, included the following excerpts: Merritt provided the following concerning the Schoffler (sic) [redacted] incident. Merritt stated that a few days after June 17, 1972, the date of the Watergate arrests, he was contacted by Schoffler and Leper (sic) who came to Merritts home. Schoffler and Leper asked Merritt it he knew [redacted] and Merritt said he did not know him. They then stated that [redacted] was a homosexual with pro-Cuban contacts and was involved with the Young Americans for Freedom. They asked Merritt to take the assignment of getting close to [redacted], know him intimately, socially, and to get the names, addresses, and phone numbers of people [redacted] was in contact with. Merritt asked why they wanted him to do this and all they stated was that this was the most important assignment that they had ever given to him and that it came from a high source, and that he would be paid well. They stated that the assignment was not for the MPD, CIA, FBI, or ATF. Merritt stated that he would think about it and let them know. A few days later, Merritt called and told Schoffler that he would not do it. Schoffler was annoyed. Schoffler also denied that the assignment had anything to do with Watergate. Several months later, in the fall of 1972, Merritt was talking to Schoffler and arguing about various things concerning the police. Schoffler told him the assignment was to get close to [redacted] because he was involved in Watergate. In June 1973, after the testimony of Schoffler and Leper before the Senate Select Committee, Merritt made an anonymous call to Jim Flug, of Senator Kennedys Subcommittee on Administrative Practices and Procedures, and told him that he thought Schoffler and Leper had been lying to the Select Committee. Flug suggested to Merritt that he call the Senate Select Committee, which Merritt did. Merritt spoke to Wayne Bishop of the Senate Select Committee and began to tell him his story concerning Schoffler. At first, Merritt would not identify himself but later he called Bishop back and identified himself and began to tell his story. As he proceeded, he decided it would be better if he had Bishop contact his lawyer, Mr. Isabell. Shortly after this, Schoffler came to see Merritt. Merritt stated that Schoffler appeared to come on a friendly pretense, but then stated that he understood that Merritt was trying to get involved in Watergate and if Merritt knew what was good for him, he would stay out of it. Schoffler then reminded Merritt of certain things that had been said to him by Tucker at the time Merritt stopped working for the FBI. The conversation with Tucker had taken place in May of 1972, at which time Tucker told Merritt to remember the bad checks he had passed in West Virginia and not to participate in any further demonstrations because wed hate to see you get shot accidentally. Tucker had gone on to tell Merritt that he should remember what happened to someone else who he knew and stated, Wed hate to find you in the Potomac with cement over-shoes. [At the time it was made, Merritt took this last threat from Tucker as a reference to the sudden disappearance of Rita Reed on the night of June 1, 1972, after she told him what she had learned.] CIA retaliation A Watergate Special Prosecution Force memorandum of December 20, 1973 on the Forces interview of Shoffler contained the following: Schoffler (sic) was questioned concerning the incident involving [redacted.] Schoffler stated that at some time after the Watergate arrests, Schoffler and Leper (sic) were in their car and met Merritt near his residence at 2121 P Street. Schoffler stated that he had first seen [redacted] the day after the Watergate arrests when [redacted] came to represent the Cubans. When Schoffler and Leper met Merritt, Merritt stated that he might know [redacted] and Merritt had an article from the newspaper with a picture of [redacted] in it. Schoffler told Merritt to let him know if Merritt found out who [redacted] was and if he was funny, i.e., homosexual. Schoffler stated that this was an off-hand comment and he never expected Merritt to do anything, and Merritt never told Schoffler anything about Caddy. Schoffler stated that in the summer of 1973, after he had testified in the Watergate hearings, Schoffler met Merritt. Merritt stated that he had made all sorts of calls to Senators concerning Watergate and the Caddy incident with Schoffler. Schoffler stated that he told Merritt if he, Merritt, reported something that was only in his head it was going to come back on him. Schoffler said that he did not in any way threaten Merritt. Schoffler stated that he introduced Merritt to FBI Agents OConnor and Tucker and that it took about a week for them to find out that he was a xxxx. Schoffler stated that of the leads that Merritt gave, only perhaps one in ten or twenty would turn out to be of any value but that Schoffler always followed the leads because of that one in twenty chance. Shofflers statement to the Watergate prosecutor about Merritt being a xxxx directly contradicted the FBI Inspectors reports of February and April 1972, which had rated Merritt as being an Excellent CI who had showed no signs of emotional instability or unreliability. In regard to the interview with Shoffler, it should be noted that in two places my name, Caddy, was left unredacted. So there is no doubt but that the actions proposed against me by MPD Officers Shoffler and Leeper and FBI Agents Tucker and OConnor were not figments of Merritts imagination. Had Shoffler and the four CIA agents had their way, I would have been assassinated. At this point it might be appropriate to ask why these government agents wanted me killed. There is no way to know what was in their minds but my guess is that they targeted me because (1) Although I was a General Foods Company employee, I had worked inside the Robert Mullen Company, which as a CIA front, and may have gained access to the extensive files stored there, (2) Robert Mullen had once telephoned me from Chile and told me he was there as part of the U.S. government operation to overthrow Chilean President Salvador Allende, who was later killed, (3) Howard Hunt may have discussed CIA activities with me, (4) Two months before Watergate broke, Hunt and the CIAs General Counsel, Lawrence Houston, had interviewed me about becoming a CIA agent and, if I accepted, my assignment was to build a luxurious tourist hotel on the seashore in Nicaragua as a means to lure leaders of the Sandinistas there, (5) Hunt may have told me about the role of CIA agents in the assassination of President John Kennedy, which he revealed in 2004 in his deathbed taped confession, and (6) and I was gay, and involved as an attorney in Watergate, the countrys biggest criminal case of the Twentieth Century. The agents approach to Merritt took place on June 28, 1972, eleven days after the arrests, which was the same day that I was subpoenaed to appear forthwith before the federal grand jury investigating Watergate. My appearing before the grand jury, which resulted in news stories, made me too visible to be taken out by government assassination. In 1975 Merritt testified before the House Select Committee on Intelligence, known as the Pike Committee after its chairman, Representative Otis Pike of New York. Pike held hearings on the illegal activities of the CIA and other government agencies. When presented with a draft of the Committees report, CIA legal counsel Mitchell Rogovin was quoted as declaring, Pike will pay for this, you wait and see…there will be political retaliation…we will destroy him for this. Indeed The New York Times led the attack on Pike, joined by other media outlets. In the end, because of the pressure brought to bear by the CIA, FBI, other agencies and the media, the Committees 1976 report was never accepted by the full House of Representatives. Here is what the suppressed Pike Committee report stated in regard to Merritt: The Committee investigated another example of lack of control over informants. The FBI used Robert Merritt as an informant on New Left activities during the early 1970s. His duties included reporting on activities at the Institute for Policy Studies. Merritt told the Committee that his FBI handling-agents instructed him to conduct break-ins, deliver unopened mail acquired illegally, and solicit and provide information to the FBI regarding homosexual proclivities of politically prominent people and individuals of the New Left. The FBI agents who handled Merritt denied these allegations under oath. They stated that Merritt acted on his own. The handling-agents [named in the Committee Reports footnotes as FBI Special Agents Tucker and OConnor] stated that they terminated Merritt because they ascertained that he provided false information on one occasion and had reason to believe he provided false information at other times in the past. If this was true, it does not fit with other facts. During the seven months that Merritt was an FBI informant, he provided over 100 reports on at least 25 people. He had, in fact, been categorized as reliable in FBI records. No effort was ever made to correct the Merritt reports by indicating that the information contained therein might be unreliable. No prosecutive actions were ever recommended as a result of Merritts alleged wrongdoing. His effort apparently fit well with intelligence operations. Further, Merritt told staff that he had committed numerous illegal acts at the direction of the District of Columbia Police. His FBI handling-agents stated that although they acquired Merritt from the Metropolitan Police Department, they never inquired as to the nature of his prior activities as a police informant. This attitude of see no evil, hear no evil appears to violate the seemingly rigid regulations of the FBI manual, designed to effect the recruitment of responsible and reliable informants. Conflicting testimony in the Merritt matter reveals the problem itself. Since FBI agents instructions to their informants are, by necessity, given orally and without witnesses, it is difficult, if not impossible, to accurately fix responsibility for an informants actions. Of course, there was a reason why the two FBI agents statements to the Pike Committee about Merritt did not fit well with the facts. Had they acknowledged their responsibility for directing Merritts illegal COINTELPRO activities, they would have opened themselves to criminal prosecution. In fact, in 1980, four years after the Pike Report was issued but never accepted, two high-ranking FBI officials, Associate Director Mark Felt and Assistant Director Edward Miller, were found guilty of illegal COINTELPRO black bag break-in jobs conducted by FBI agents under their direction. The Mysterious Role of Mark Felt The occasion of criminal prosecution of Felt and Miller serves appropriately to examine the mysterious role of FBI Associate Director Mark Felt in Watergate, who gained fame in 2005 when Vanity Fair magazine revealed him to be Deep Throat. When J. Edgar Hoover died on May 2, 1972, Merritt was sitting with Agents Tucker and OConner in a Volkswagen at the bottom of a hill near Hoovers residence. When word came over the FBI radio that Hoover had been found dead, OConnor quickly gave Merritt money to catch a taxi home, after which the agents rushed into Hoovers home. President Nixon named L. Patrick Gray III as the FBIs Acting Director, passing over Mark Felt, who was named Associate Director. This did not sit well with Felt, who believed he should have been named Director. When Watergate broke, Felt decided to get even with Nixon for not naming him Director. As second in command, Felt saw everything compiled on Watergate before it went to Gray. He started leaking key information gathered by the FBI investigation to Woodward and Bernstein at the Washington Post. His actions did not go unnoticed. In an Oval Office tape of October 19, 1972, H.R. Haldeman told the President that Felt was speaking to the press: You cant say anything about this because it will screw up our sources but theres a real concern. [John] Mitchell is the only one who knows about this and he feels strongly that we better not do anything because …if we move on him, hell go out and unload everything. He has access to everything. In April 1978 Felt, Miller and Gray were indicted for engaging in a conspiracy to violate the constitutional rights of American citizens by searching their homes without warrants. The case against Gray was dropped but a jury in November 1980 found Felt and Miller guilty. President Ronald Reagan in March 1981, only a few months after taking office, granted pardons to the two men. Ironically Merritt may have been responsible for the indictment and trial of the FBI officials because of his detailed testimony before an Executive Session of the Senate Watergate Committee, the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, and the Pike Committee about the FBI directing his activities in COINTELPRO. In the early 1970s, Felt had overseen COINTELPRO. Jennifer Dohrn was one of the persons targeted for illegal abuse by the FBI because her sister, Bernadine, was a leader in the Weather Underground. Jennifer Dohrn, appearing on Amy Goodmans Democracy Now program on June 2, 2005, recounted that: I remember when I was pregnant with my firstborn feeling extremely vulnerable because I was followed a great deal of the time, and then it was revealed when I received my Freedom of Information Act papers, over 200,000 documents, that there actually had been developed by Felt a plan to kidnap my son after I birthed in hoping to get my sister to surrender…I was not asked to testify [at Felts criminal trial in 1980], and it is interesting that the concrete thing that he could be convicted of were burglaries against me and several other people, break-ins, which were documented and recorded. FBI Agents Tucker and OConnor were Felts right-hand soldiers in carrying out COINTELPRO. They, in turn, directed Merritt. As has been recounted here, they visited Merritt two days after he told Shoffler what he had learned from Rita about the planned break-in of the DNC. They told Merritt that they had heard rumors that he knew of a planned break-in. He refused to answer their questions. They returned again two days after the Watergate arrests and

of relief that he was free at last from contact with the FBI. As events turned out shortly thereafter, this was not to be the case. Rita Reed makes a dangerous discovery On June 1, 1972, a week before the FBI discharged him, Merritt received a visit in his apartment from Rita Reed who appeared visibly upset. Close friends, Merritt and Reed invariably chatted on a daily basis. This time Rita told Merritt that she had desperately urgent news but didn’t want to meet in Butch’s apartment. She knew of Butch’s sexual relationship with Shoffler, and his CI work for him, having found them together. She feared the apartment was wiretapped. She had also recently seen Shoffler at the Columbia Plaza Apartments where he and other cops used a trunk room to monitor the telephone traffic of the Nazis and a major prostitution ring, which was routed through her PBX switchboard. Rita insisted that they go outside to talk but even then was paranoid about speaking openly on the street. Instead they headed to P Street Beach, an area two blocks away, a grassy hill that sloped down into Rock Creek Park. Once they reached the bottom of the hill and began walking through the woods, Rita began to relax. She told Merritt that the day before, May 31, she had indulged her habit of secretly listening to random conversations going through her switchboard. The switchboard had three unassigned holes held in reserve, though hole number two had been used to make calls out from an undetermined location within the building. She disclosed that the previous day a call had gone out using hole two and within minutes a call back came in for the same hole…the first time this had ever happened. So Rita, her curiosity piqued, listened in. She heard two men discussing a planned break-in at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) office in the Watergate Complex scheduled for Sunday, June 18, 1972. The two men spoke venomously about Richard Nixon and referred to their project as “Crimson Rose,” which they boasted was about to bloom and could destroy the Nixon presidency. After Rita told Merritt what she’d overheard they continued on through the woods. They reached the end of the trail where an old gate spanned the waters of Rock Creek. Directly before them was the complex of buildings known as the Watergate. Rita raised her right arm, pointed to Watergate and ominously declared, “Butch, this will be the fate of the President of the United States.” She then again referred to “Crimson Rose” saying, “Butch, I think this rose stinks.” Rita swore Merritt to secrecy and asked that he not tell anyone of the telephone conversation she had overheard. However, the next day, June 2, true to his calling Merritt telephoned MPD Sergeant Dixie Gildon and started telling Rita’s secret. Gildon cut short his recital, saying she was rushing to a meeting but promised to meet him later at a safe location they regularly used for exchanges. For some reason Gildon failed to show up. The next day Shoffler returned to their apartment and Merritt told him Rita’s story. Shoffler became flushed with excitement and ordered Merritt not to talk to anyone about the subject, including Gildon. Shoffler left but returned later with two government agents, one a retired CIA employee. They asked Butch to retell the story. When he finished answering questions one of the agents remarked to Shoffler, “Carl, this is going to make you the most famous cop in the world.” The three men left after again swearing Merritt to secrecy. Rita disappeared that same evening. Merritt became alarmed. She was not at her apartment and had failed to show up for work at the Columbia Plaza Apartments. Several days later Merritt brought up Rita’s disappearance to Shoffler but Shoffler told him to “forget about that drag queen.” Butch never saw Rita again and felt that breaking his promise to keep her secret may have led to her death. Two days later (FBI agents) Tucker and O’Connor knocked on Merritt’s apartment door. They’d heard a rumor that Merritt knew something about burglars planning a break-in at an office building. They wanted the whole story. Merritt declined because he was still upset from being harassed by the homophobic agents and because of his emerging ethical concerns about his assignments. He also remembered Shoffler’s edict not to tell anyone Rita’s discovery. The agents left but not before telling Merritt that they found his attitude uncooperative and troublesome. Shoffler’s Plan: entrap the burglars and get famous About a week later Shoffler boasted to Merritt that he had implemented a plan to catch the burglars. It involved wire-tapping “triangulation”, a strategy he’d learned as an Army Intelligence Agent at Vint Hill Farm Station, the National Security Agency’s wiretapping school in Virginia. His scheme set the burglars up by temporarily splicing into the wiretap that they were using…then carrying on a phony two-person telephone conversation that he himself had orchestrated. The burglars were duped into believing what they heard, never realizing that it was not the usual telephone line they used for wiretapping. According to Merritt, Shoffler bragged that the message he left, and overheard by the burglars, falsely disclosed that there was an envelope in a secretary’s desk in the Democratic National Committee offices that contained a vital document and a key to a safe deposit box…a box which contained even more important materials. The envelope had to be picked up on Saturday, June 17, before Noon. A key to the desk would be left under the telephone on the secretary’s desk. The message further required the burglars to move their planned break-in forward from June 18 to the 17th; Shoffler planned to give himself a very special birthday present. The burglars unwittingly complied. A few days before the planned break-in, Merritt went to a nearby locksmith store at Shoffler’s request and purchased a blank safe deposit key. When he returned to their apartment Shoffler used his finger nails (to avoid putting his fingerprints on it) to give Merritt a plain envelope and a sheet of paper that had garbled language on it. Shoffler directed Merritt to fold and insert the sheet of paper and blank safe deposit key inside the envelop and seal it. Once this was done, he asked Merritt to place the sealed envelope in a pocket inside his jacket. Now all it took for Shoffler was to wait for the burglars to break-in so he could make the arrests. On Friday, June 16, Shoffler’s shift ended at 10 P.M. Though it was late, he arbitrarily volunteered for another shift, even though his wife and children had gone to Pennsylvania to stay at his parents’ home where they awaited his arrival looking forward to celebrating his birthday the next day. Shortly after midnight, at Shoffler’s suggestion, Shoffler, Sergeant Paul Leeper and Officer John Barrett parked their undercover police vehicle a block from the Watergate, at Shoffler’s suggestion. Just before 2 A.M. dispatch alerted them that Watergate security had called – urgently requesting support. It appeared that someone had broken in, leaving a door with its lock taped behind them. Shoffler, Leeper and Barrett responded immediately and within minutes arrested five burglars inside DNC offices. The Two Keys In recounting what took place during the arrests, Shoffler claimed that after the five burglars had been forced to lean against a wall with their hands, he saw one of the burglars, Eugenio Martinez, slide his hand to something in his pocket. Shoffler asserted that he struggled with Martinez and seized a small notebook that had a key taped on its back. In a deposition, this is how Shoffler described the event under oath on March 13 and 15, 1995. Lawyers for Maureen and John Dean had filed suit against St. Martin’s Press, Inc., publishers of Silent Coup: The Removal of the President, whose co-authors are Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin. Shoffler testified: “We had placed them on the wall with their hands against the wall and their feet out. And we started on the extreme right of the five to search and seize the evidence. “Martinez was on the extreme left. “As I was writing what [Officer] Barrett was seizing, I observed that Martinez was sliding his hand down the wall. We had padded them down initially for weapons. And I didn’t feel that he had a pistol or anything on him. But I wasn’t certain at this point while he was sliding his hand down. “So I moved quickly over to him, pushed his hand forcefully back up. He struggled a little. I had my revolver out. [burglars] McCord or Frank Sturgis, I believe, instructed him to calm down and just follow our instructions. I think that there was a realization on their part that we were younger officers and we were aggressive. And he started calming Martinez down, and asking him to follow our directions. “Martinez did not comply. At some point, within seconds, his hand was back again going into the area of his coat pocket. We had a struggle again. I was very forceful with him. The others were yelling. We thought things were getting out of hand. “I decided to follow Martinez’s hand. He was grasping something. I’ve always said that I had the impression that whatever he was grasping he was going to get rid of or eat. I don’t know how to put that into words any better than that. “I struggled with him. And I recovered from his hand what he was so concerned about, even to the point of possibly risking being shot. And it turned out to be a simple notebook with a key on it. And that was certainly a bit of a puzzle.”[pp. 23-25] With the arrests wrapped up, Shoffler telephoned the Washington Post and alerted the newspaper to what had transpired at Watergate. At around 7 A.M., nearly five hours after the arrests, Shoffler returned to the P Street apartment that he shared with Merritt and woke him up. Shoffler was happy and excited and he embraced Merritt and kissed him, proudly exclaiming “I arrested five burglars.” He showed Merritt the notebook the he had taken off one of the burglars. He also showed Merritt the envelope that Merritt had previously sealed, now open, along with the paper inside. He produced two keys, one of which was the blank safe deposit key that Merritt had purchased at Shoffler’s request. He took a roll of duct tape from a drawer in the kitchen and taped the second key to the back of the notebook. He then again swore Merritt to secrecy, making him promise never to tell that they knew two weeks in advance of the burglars’ break-in plan of the DNC. He then departed, saying he was going to get breakfast at nearby Hartnett Hall and afterwards go to court to assist the prosecutor in the arraignment of the arrested burglars. The “Missing” Notebook and Key What happened to the notebook and key, which, pursuant to police standard operating procedure should have been bagged and tagged, and included in the list of items seized at the crime scene inside the DNC? In his sworn deposition of March 15, 1995, Shoffler provided the answer when asked additional questions posed by the Dean’s lawyer: “Q. Now, what did you do with the notebook and key? “A. Well, it was only recently that I became aware of the fact that, in the logs for all the evidence that we seized, it doesn’t appear that there was an entry for the notebook. And the only explanation I could offer of that is that I was shown a photograph of the national archives. My initials are clearly on the book and the date. “My recollection is that when I got back to the precinct, because we had deviated in our game plan from the actual persons to list and search and seize, because of that shuffle and the fact that I had to actually seize the notebook, I believed I retained possession of it, noted it, and it was my responsibility to process it. “And I believe that’s why it isn’t in the entry that you’ve shown me or someone has shown me recently.” “Q. All right. Let me show what I’ll ask the court reporter to mark as Exhibit 6, which is, and I will represent to counsel, a copy – excuse me, it’s a photocopy of the key and the notebook that is now at the National Archives and was recently copied there, and ask you if you can identify whether that is the notebook and the key that you took from the burglars that night? “A. Yes, sir. I believe this is the notebook and the key. My initials appear in the upper right-hand corner. “Q. Can you show that to the videographer, please? “A. (Witness complied.) “Q. Okay, thank you. Now, at the time of the arrests, did you conduct any investigation to determine whether this key that you seized from the burglars fit any particular lock? “A. No, sir, I didn’t. “Q. Do you know if any such search, excuse me, any such investigation was ever made? “A. I pointed it out to who would be responsible for the furtherance of the investigation. That was the FBI. I don’t recall the particular agent, but I believe I may have even supplied him the notebook. And I read, years later, read a 302, a bureau report, in which two weeks after the burglary, apparently they had taken the key back down and determined it fit the desk of the secretary of whom some of that [burglars’] material was laying on.” [pp. 30-32] Thus, Shoffler admitted that in contravention of universal and standard police procedure he retained personal possession of two primary pieces of evidence from the crime scene, the notebook and the key, which should have been listed and bagged at the crime scene. There is further discussion of the matter in the same sworn deposition: “Q. Mr. Shoffler, you personally obtained some of the evidence, or not obtain, but collected some of the evidence from the Watergate burglars on the morning of June 17, ’72; is that correct? “A. The notebook and the key, yes, sir. “Q. That’s it? “A. From the burglars? “Q. Yes. “A.Yes, sir. “Q. Those are the only items of evidence that you personally collected from the burglars? “A. I was a listing officer. Officer Barrett was a seizing officer. “Q. So, Officer Barrett did not collect the notebook and key, you did? “A. Correct. “Q. Everything else was collected by Officer Barrett? “A. That’s correct. “Q. How did you handle the notebook and the key when you took it from the person of Mr. Martinez so as not to contaminate it? “A. I maintained possession of it and I properly disposed -- deposited it at the precinct. And my last recollection was it was collected by the FBI. “Q. What was inside the notebook that was attached to the key? “A. I provided – the only recollection that I can provide, there was some sort of chart or like a little diagram or line X, whatever you want to describe it as. There were -- something else was written on it, I don’t recall what it was, and there was a key taped to it with gray tape. [pp. 459-460] “Q. Did you ever testify about the key when you testified before the Senate Watergate Committee? “A. I was not asked. “Q. Is there any reason why you didn’t bring it up? “[lawyer for St. Martin’s Press] He just said he wasn’t asked. “Q. Is there any other reason? “A. The room was full of cameras, a bunch of senators, and they wanted to get on with the show and the police were asked – and I was asked one or two questions, did you – were you there? Did you arrest them? Have a nice day. [p. 538] “Q. Have you ever discussed it with Don Campbell [one of the original three Watergate prosecutors]? “A. Numerous times. “Q. And when did you first discuss the key with Mr. Campbell? “A. Around the time that I started getting real interested. “Q. Which was 1973? “A. ’73, ’74, somewhere in there. “Q. And when was the last time you discussed the key with Mr. Campbell? “A. Oh, I don’t recall. Maybe a year ago. “Q. Do you recall what you said to him a year ago about it? “A. Just that I was still attempting to find out – I was curious that there was no major interest generated. It seems to me that anyone who is still puzzled over a burglary that occurred 20 something years before, as to the motive of the burglary, yet a key that is found on one of the burglars under the circumstances I described, fitting a desk in there, didn’t seem to generate interest. I was puzzled about that.” [pp. 542-543] Like a pyromaniac who cannot resist going back to watch the fire he has set, Shoffler kept returning to the subject of the key, which was the linchpin of his triangulation plan that set up the burglars. Like a serial killer who always left his signature piece of evidence as a way to taunt law enforcement, Shoffler was puzzled why his brilliant scheme involving the key did not attract the attention and interest it obviously deserved. Developments after the break-in On June 19, two days after the arrests at Watergate, FBI Agents Tucker and O’Connor returned to Merritt’s apartment. This time they were adamant that Merritt tell them what he knew about the break-in. Since the FBI had terminated his CI job less than two weeks before, Merritt felt he was under no obligation to respond to their questions. Later the same day Shoffler, accompanied by Sergeant Leeper, approached Merritt with their proposition that he get to know me on a personal basis, as described previously in The Advocate article. He declined, primarily because he did not think it was feasible that our paths would cross. A few days later Shoffler and Leeper again returned to Merritt’s apartment, this time accompanied by FBI Agents Tucker and O’Connor, in an attempt to persuade him to accept the assignment of getting to know me on a personal basis. He refused their entreaties. On June 28, eleven days after the arrests, Shoffler again showed up at the apartment, this time accompanied by four CIA agents. Their proposition to Merritt was somewhat different: they wanted him to assassinate me. “I asked the agents what the reason was that they wanted me to go to this length and why they and the government were taking such a risk. I was told that this matter involved a high national security situation that they were not at liberty to disclose. The agents stated that their orders did not allow them to know the answers and that they were only following orders from their superiors who sometimes did not know the answers either and merely implemented instructions from those above. However, from the agents’ comments I inferred that because Douglas Caddy was gay, that was enough.” Even though the government agents offered him $100,000 to undertake the assassination assignment, Merritt steadfastly refused. My Own Watergate Story We now must take a temporary detour from recounting Merritt’s involvement in Watergate to explain my own, if the full story of the scandal is to be told. In 1956 I enrolled in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. In 1958, still enrolled, I and my roommate, David Franke, founded the National Student Committee for the Loyalty Oath, which was the first national conservative youth organization. This led to our founding Youth For Goldwater for Vice President whose aim was to get Nixon to choose the Arizona Senator as his running mate in the 1960 presidential election. After being graduated from Georgetown in May 1960, I accepted a position as an assistant to former Governor Charles Edison of New Jersey, the son of Thomas Edison. Governor Edison was chairman of the McGraw-Edison Company and lived in the Towers of the Waldorf Astoria where his neighbors and fellow bridge players were former President Herbert Hoover and General Douglas MacArthur. In July of 1960, at the Chicago Republican Convention which nominated Nixon, Goldwater emerged on the national scene as a major political figure. After Nixon chose Henry Cabot Lodge as his running mate, Senator Goldwater spoke to his young supporters urging those who had coalesced around his Vice Presidential candidacy to form a permanent organization. This led to the founding of Young Americans for Freedom in September 1960 at Great Elm, the family estate of William F. Buckley, Jr. in Sharon, Connecticut. I was chosen to be its first National Director. YAF sponsored the first mass conservative rally the next year in the Manhattan Center in New York City and followed this up with another mass rally the following year in Madison Square Garden. After decades of being dormant, Conservatism was on the march. In 1962 I enrolled in New York University Law School where I attended night classes while working during the day for New York Lieutenant Governor Malcolm Wilson, a conservative. His office was on the fifth floor of a townhouse at 22 West 55th Street owned by Governor Nelson Rockefeller whose offices occupied the remaining floors in the building. After being graduated from NYU Law School in 1966, I went to work for General Foods Corporation in White Plains, New York, where my task was to advise the company on government relations. In 1969, General Foods transferred me to Washington, D.C. with the aim of opening up an office there to represent the company in its government relations. However, for the first year General Foods wanted me to work out of the offices of its public relations firm, the Robert Mullen Company. What General Foods failed to tell me at the time was that the Robert Mullen Company was a CIA front operation, having been incorporated by the CIA in 1959 and that General Foods lent its name as a client of the Mullen Company as a cover for secret CIA activities. Soon after I began working in the Mullen Company offices in 1969, Howard Hunt became a Mullen employee. His sponsor was Richard Helms, Director of the CIA. Hunt and I immediately became close friends when we found that we had something in common: our friendships with William F. Buckley. Buckley was the godfather of Hunt’s children and had served as a CIA agent under Hunt when the latter headed the CIA’s office in Mexico City. I, as noted previously, had worked with Buckley in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, literally, founding the modern conservative movement. In early 1971 Mullen approached Hunt and me about purchasing his company as he was nearing retirement age. The discussion dragged on until Mullen suddenly announced that he was selling the company to Robert Bennett, son of the Republican senator from Utah. About that time I was offered employment as an attorney with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Gall, Lane, Powell and Kilcullen. I accepted the offer and one of my first clients was Howard Hunt. In March 1972, John Kilcullen, a partner in the firm, assigned me to do volunteer work for the Lawyers Committee to Re-Elect President Nixon. For the next three months I periodically performed legal work under the direction of John Dean, Counsel to the President, and Gordon Liddy, Counsel to the Finance Committee for the Re-Election of Nixon. On June 17, 1972, the story of Watergate broke with the arrests of the burglars. Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy, who had remained in a room in the Watergate Hotel while the burglary operation was undertaken, fled the hotel within minutes after the arrests of the five burglars. How I became involved as an attorney was recounted by Hunt in his biography, Undercover: Memoirs of an American Secret Agent (Berkley, 1974): “From there I drove to the White House Annex – the Old Executive Office Building, in bygone years War Department and the Department of State. “Carrying three heavy attaché cases, I entered the Pennsylvania Avenue door, showing my blue-and-white White House pass to the uniformed guards, and took the elevator to the third floor. I unlocked the door of 338 and went in. I opened my two-drawer safe, took out my operational handbook, found a telephone number and dialed it. “The time was 3:13 in the morning of June 17, 1972, and five of my companions had been arrested and taken to the maximum-security block of the District of Columbia jail. I had recruited four of them and it was my responsibility to get them out. That was the sole focus of my thoughts as I began talking on the telephone. “But with those five arrests the Watergate affair had begun… “After several rings the call was answered and I heard the sleepy voice of Douglas Caddy. “Yes?” “Doug? This is Howard. I hate to wake you up, but I’ve got a tough situation and I need to talk to you. Can I come over? “Sure. I’ll tell the desk clerk you’re expected. “I’ll be there in about twenty minutes,” I told him, and hung up. “From the safe I took a small money box and removed the $10,000 Liddy had given me for emergency use. I put $1,500 in my wallet and the remaining $8,500 in my coat pocket. The black attaché case containing McCord’s electronic equipment I placed in a safe drawer that held my operational notebook. Then I closed and locked the safe, turning the dial several times. The other two cases I left beside the safe, turned out the light and left my office, locking the door.” Hunt arrived at my apartment at 3:35 A.M. and told me what had happened at Watergate. He retained me as his attorney in the case. He telephoned Liddy, who also retained me as his attorney. They then both retained me to represent the five arrested burglars. Our goal was to attempt to keep the case from attracting public attention, although it was later learned that Shoffler was alerting the Washington Post of the break-in and arrests even as we spoke. At that point I called Robert Scott, a partner at Gall, Lane et al, and explained the situation. He then contacted a criminal lawyer. The criminal lawyer and I agreed to meet at the courthouse at 9AM for the arraignment of the burglars. Hunt left for home. Strangely, and coincidentally, I came to learn that Merritt had lived right across the street from me during this whole affair but our paths had never crossed. Merritt lived at 2122 P Street and I lived at 2121 P Street. On the morning of the break-in, after the arrests, Hunt came to my apartment at 3:35 AM and departed around 5 AM. At 7AM Shoffler arrived at the apartment across the street that he shared with Merritt, exuberant about having arrested the burglars at 2:30 AM. He left at 8 A.M. to get breakfast, and then went to court. I left my apartment building at 8:30 AM to meet my new co-counsel who would represent the burglars at their arraignment. All this activity between strangers, and truly principal players in Watergate, took place within a radius of 200 feet, with none of us the wiser. It was lucky timing that I and Shoffler didn’t crash into each other as we each prepared to go the arraignment at the courthouse.